Cibrarp  of  Che  Cheoiocjical  gminavy 

PRINCETON    •    NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

San  Francisco  Theoso-ohical 
Book  Concern 

BP  570  .B47  1910 

Besant,  Annie  Wood,  1847- 

1933. 
Popular  lectures  on 
_   t.hposoDhv 


*      OCT  19  1911 


POPULAR    LECTURES 

ON 

THEOSOPHY 


I.  WHAT  IS  THEOSOPHY? 

II.  THE  LADDER  OF  LIVES. 

III.  REINCARNATION :  ITS  NECESSITY. 

IV.  REINCARNATION:   ITS  ANSWERS 

TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS. 

V.  THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION. 

VI.  MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS. 


ANNIE  BESANT 
President  of  the  Theosophical  Society. 


DELIVERED    AT    ADYAR,    INDIA,    IN 
FEBRUARY    AND    MARCH    1910. 


THE  RAJPUT  PRESS. 


CHICAGO. 

1910. 


I. 

WHAT    IS    THEOSOPHY? 

There  have  been  of  late  months  so  many  enquiries  about  Theosophy 
that  I  thought  I  would  take  advantage  of  my  being  here  for  some  time 
to  give  a  course  of  lectures  covering  practically  the  main  outlines  and 
teaching  of  this  much  talked  of  subject— Theosophy ;  so  that  any  one  who 
is  not  a  student  may  be  able  to  realize  the  general  trend  of  thought  and 
the  scope  of  the  subject  with  which  we  shall  have  to  deal  in  the  next  five 
weeks.     I  shall  try  to  put  the  subject  as  plainly  as  it  can  well  be  put,  and 
to  avoid  technicalities  as  far  as  possible,  so  that  nothing  more  may  be 
wanted  for  the  first  understanding  of  this  subject  by  a  man  who  possesses 
a  certain  amount  of  intelligence  and  education.     I  do  not  pretend  that 
Theosophy  in  all  its  aspects  can  be  made  intelligible  to  the  uneducated  or 
to  the  thoughtless.    But,  for  a  person  of  ordinary  intelligence  and  educa- 
tion, accustomed  to  use  his  mind  in  the  affairs  of  the  world,  nothing  more 
than  sustained  attention  and  every-day  intelligence  are  required  in  order 
to  understand  its  main  teachings  in  a  coherent  and  synthetical  way.    Some 
of  the  teachings  are  so  simple  that  even  the  uneducated  can  grasp  enough 
for  the  guidance  of  conduct.     But  the  way  in  which  one  is  linked  to  an- 
other, the  fashion  in  which  the  whole  of  them  together  build  up  a  great 
Synthesis  of  Life— this  is  a  conception  somewhat  difficult  to  be  under- 
stood unless  a  man  possesses  some  education. 


2       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

Theosophy  in  its  present  form  only  came  into  the  world  in  the  year 
1875 ;  but  Theosophy  itself  is  as  old  as  civilized  and  thoughtful  humanity. 
It  has  been  known  in  the  world  under  many  names  in  the  many  languages 
of  the  world.  But  although  the  languages  and  therefore  the  names  have 
been  different,  that  which  the  name  conveys  has  always  been  the  same. 
The  special  reason  for  its  reproclamation  in  our  own  days  was  the  fact 
that  materialism  was  making  very  rapid  and  dangerous  advances  in  the 
nations  which  were  leading  the  march  of  civilization  in  the  world.  More 
and  more  as  science  "developed  its  knowledge,  it  tended  to  run  along 
materialistic  lines.  The  word  "Agnostic"  was  becoming  the  characteristic 
epithet  of  the  scientific  man,  and  at  that  critical  time,  under  the  special 
conditions  of  European  thought,  the  idea  was  spreading  that  while  man 
could  know  all  that  was  observable  by  the  senses,  all  that  the  reason  could 
establish,  on,  and  infer  from,  those  observations,  beyond  the  senses  and 
the  intellect  he  possessed  no  instruments  for  the  gaining  of  knowledge,  no 
means  of  contacting  the  universe  outside  him;  hence  it  was  impos- 
sible that  man  should  know  anything  about  the  deeper  and  perennial 
problems  of  life,  anything  of  his  origin  and  his  goal,  anything  included 
under  the  words,  God,  Immortality,  Spirit.  This  mode  of  thought  was 
also  reacting  on  the  East  and  in  the  Colonies  into  which  European  thought 
penetrated,  and  threatened  to  cover  the  world.  Then  the  great  Guardians 
of  Humanity  thought  it  wise  that  the  old  truth  should  be  proclaimed  in  a 
new  form  suited  to  the  mind  and  the  attitude  of  the  man  of  the  time; 
and  just  as  before  religion  after  religion  had  been  revealed  to  man  to  suit 
the  passing  conditions  of  a  new  national  development,  so  in  our  own  day 
was  made  the  reproclamation  of  the  basis  of  all  religions,  so  that  without 
depriving  any  nation  of  the  special  advantage  which  his  own  particular 
faith  gives  it,  it  might  be  seen  that  all  religions  mean  one  and  the  same 
thing  and  that  they  are  but  branches  from  a  single  tree.  Now,  this  way 
of  putting  religion  to  the  modern  world  was  all  the  more  necessary  aiv! 


WHAT  IS  THEOSOPHY?  3 

important  because  science  was  putting  forth  much  the  same  doctrine,  but 
in  a  different  way  and  for  a  different  end.  It  classed  the  various  religious 
manifestations  under  the  title  "Comparative  Mythology."  A  careful  ex- 
amination of  the  many  ruins  left  by  the  past,  the  researches  of  the  anti- 
quarian and  the  archaeologist,  the  study  of  the  literature  of  ancient  civ- 
ilizations of  antique  inscriptions,  had  all  gone  to  prove  beyond  possibility 
lations  of  antique  inscriptions,  had  all  gone  to  prove  beyond  possibility 
cf  argument,  much  less  of  dispute,  that  the  fundamental  doctrines  of  all 
religions  were  identical,  that  their  moral  codes  at  a  similar  stage  of  civ- 
ilization were  the  same,  that  the  stories  of  their  Founders  closely  re- 
sembled each  other;  even  the  outward  ceremonies,  forms,  rites,  and  sac- 
ramental functions  of  the  various  religions,  though  differing  as  to  detail 
in  their  outer  garb,  contained  a  fundamental  similarity  of  ideas.  Now 
this  identity  was  being  used  by  those  who  did  not  believe  in  any  religion 
to  combat  and  discredit  all  religions.  In  every  case,  it  was  argued,  re- 
ligion was  the  fruit  of  man's  ignorance,  however  it  might  have  become 
refined  in  its  later  stages;  and  as  man  grew  into  knowledge  the  death- 
knell  of  Religion  would  be  rung. 

That  was,  then,  the  position  of  the  western  world  when  the  reproclama- 
tion  of  the  old  knowledge  was  made.  As  the  work  of  Theosophy  lay  at 
first  in  America  and  Europe,  it  was  natural  to  turn  to  Greek  thought 
for  a  name  which  would  express  the  old  ideas.  Some  time  after  the  com- 
ing of  the  Christ,  the  name  Theosophia,  Divine  Wisdom,  had  been  used 
in  the  Neoplatonic  Schools,  and  from  that  time  onwards  it  appeared  in 
one  School  of  philosophy  after  another;  mystic  after  mystic  in  Europe 
had  used  it,  so  that  it  carried  with  it  a  certain  connotation  in  European 
thought,  enabling  anyone  who  was  versed  in  religious,  mystical  or  phil- 
osophical thought  to  recognize  at  once  what  was  implied  when  Theosophy 
was  mentioned.  It  had  behind  it  the  old  connotation,  and  presented  itself 
with  its  full  content  to  the  educated  mind. 


4        POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

If  we  go  beyond  the  Christian  era,  we  find  the  same  view  under  another 
name,  not  now  the  Greek  Theosophia  but  the  Samskrt  Brahmavidya ;  but 
Brahma  is  God,  and  vidya  is  wisdom,  so  again  we  have  the  name  Divine 
Wisdom.  It  was  also  put  in  another  way,  with  a  different  name  again: 
the  Paravidya,  the  Supreme  Wisdom. 

A  great  Teacher  was  once  asked  by  a  disciple  about  knowledge,  and 
he  said  that  there  were  two  kinds  of  knowledge,  namely  the  lower  and 
the  higher.  All  that  can  be  taught  by  man  to  man,  all  science,  all  art,  all 
literature,  even  the  Scriptures,  the  Vedas  themselves,  all  these  were 
classed  as  forms  of  the  lower  knowledge;  and  then  he  went  on  to  say, 
that  the  knowledge  of  the  One,  whom  knowing,  all  else  is  known,  the 
knowledge  of  Him,  that  is  the  supreme,  the  highest  knowledge.  That  is 
Theosophy.    Tnat  is  the  "knowledge  of  God  which  is  eternal  life." 

Against  the  scientific  assertion  that  all  religions  had  their  root  in  human 
ignorance,  there  rang  out  the  triumphant  proclamation  that  religions  do 
not  come  out  of  human  ignorance  but  out  of  divine  knowledge.  They  are 
all  ways  by  which  man  has  sought  to  find  God.  What  is  Religion?  Re- 
ligion is  the  everlasting  search  of  the  human  Spirit  for  the  divine,  of 
Man  for  God.  The  religions  of  the  world  are  but  the  methods  of  the 
searching.  Look  where  you  will  in  history,  go  to  any  civilization  or  any 
people,  travel  to  the  furthest  East  or  the  furthest  West,  stop  where  you 
will  at  any  place,  at  any  time,  and  you  will  find  everywhere  the  ineradi- 
cable thirst  of  man  for  God.  That  is  the  cry  which  rings  insistently  from 
the  lips  of  humanity.  It  was  truly  voiced  by  the  Hebrew  singer:  "As 
the  hart  panteth  after  the  water-brooks,  so  longeth  my  soul  after  thee,  O 
God."  Giordano  Bruno  used  an  apt  simile  when  he  compared  this  seek- 
ing of  God  by  man  to  the  effort  of  water  ever  to  regain  its  own  level ;  as 
water  ever  seeks  to  rise  to  the  level  whence  it  fell,  so  does  the  human 
Spirit  ever  seek  to  rise  to  the  Divinity  whence  he  came. 


WHAT  IS  THEOSOPHY?  5 

But  if  you  would  know — not  only  hope,  not  only  long,  not  only  believe, 
but  know — with  a  sureness  of  conviction  that  can  never  be  shaken,  then 
the  divine  Spirit  must  be  sought  not  outside  you  but  within  you.  Do  not 
go  to  the  Scientist,  for  he  can  only  tell  you  that  there  is  a  law  in  nature 
which  never  alters.  Do  not  go  to  the  Theologian,  for  he  will  only  give 
you  arguments  while  you  want  conviction.  Do  not  go  to  the  Artist,  for 
though  he  may  take  you  a  little  nearer,  he  can  only  tell  you  of  the  Beauty 
which  is  God's,  and  that  is  not  all.  Do  not  go  to  the  Philosopher,  for  he 
can  only  give  you  abstractions.  Go,  then,  within  and  not  without,  plunge 
fearlessly  into  the  depths  of  your  own  being;  seek  in  the  cavity  of  your 
own  heart  the  hidden  mystery— the  mystery  which,  verily,  is  worthy  to 
be  enquired  into — and  there,  there  only,  you  will  find  Him.  But  when 
you  have  found  Him  there,  then  you  will  find  that  everything  in  the  uni- 
verse is  hymning  His  name  and  His  glory.  Find  Him  first  in  your  own 
Self,  and  then  you  will  see  Him  everywhere. 

This  is  the  fundamental  Truth,  the  Truth  of  truths.  This  is  the  Divine 
Wisdom,  which  we  call  Theosophy.  This  is  the  reproclamation  in  the 
modern  world  of  the  most  ancient,  the  most  vital,  of  all  Realities. 

Next,  Theosophy  teaches  us  two  fundamental  doctrines:  the  first  of 
these  is  the  Immanence  of  God.  God  is  everywhere,  and  in  everything. 
This  is  a  truth  that  may  be  found  in  any  ancient  Scripture,  though  in 
modern  days  it  has  slipped  from  the  memory  of  the  western  world,  and 
seems  to  many  people  there  something  new,  foreign  and  strange,  when 
it  is  again  preached,  as  it  is  being  preached  now,  even  from  Christian 
pulpits.  You  will  find  it  in  every  great  Scripture.  Take  for  instance 
the  Bhagavad-Gita,  so  familiar  and  so  dear : 

Nor  is  there  aught,  moving  or  unmoving,  that  may  exist  bereft  of 
Me.  (x.  39.) 

And  again : 

Having  pervaded  this  whole  universe  with  one  fragment  of  Myself, 
I  remain,  (x.  42.) 


6       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

Let  us  leave  the  ancient  Scriptures  and  turn  to  the  hopes  and  aspira- 
tions of  the  most  modern  men;  we  find  the  same  hope  is  being  voiced. 
Take,  for  instance,  Tennyson,  wistfully  appealing  to  his  own  Spirit  within 
to  speak  to  the  divine  Spirit,  since  "Spirit  with  Spirit  can  meet,"  and  he 
affirms : 

Closer  is  He  than  breathing, 
Nearer  than  hands  and  feet. 
There  is  nothing  but  God  everywhere.  Nothing  but  God  in  all  the 
multiplicity  of  forms.  All  thought,  all  consciousness  are  His,  for  He  is 
the  One,  the  only,  the  eternal  Life.  He  is  in  us,  and  that  is  the  pledge  of 
all  that  we  can  ever  be,  the  pledge  of  our  immortal  life.  Immortal  life? 
Nay,  for  what  is  Immortality?  It  is  only  endless  time,  age  after  age, 
succession  of  time.  Man  is  more  than  immortal,  or  everlasting;  for  what 
in  time  began  in  time  must  end.  Man  is  eternal.  There  is  the  guarantee, 
the  security,  of  endless  progress.  Man  is  eternal  as  God  Himself  is 
eternal. 

He  is  not  born,  nor  doth  he  die;  nor,  having  been,  ceaseth  he  any 

more  to  be; 
Unborn,  perpetual,  ancient,  and  eternal,  he  is  not  slain  when  the  body 
is  slaughtered. 

{Bhagavad-Gita,  ii.  20.) 
Death  only  means  the  dropping  of  a  garment,  and  when  he  needs  it,  he 
dons  another.    While  God  lives,  man  cannot  die. 

The  second  fundamental  teaching  is  linked  to  the  first,  and  can  never 
be  wrenched  away  from  it.  It  is  the  truth  of  the  Solidarity  of  all  the 
living,  of  all  that  is.  If  there  be  one  Life,  one  consciousness,  if  in  every 
form  God  be  immanent,  then  all  forms  are  interlinked  with  one  another. 
That  is  the  inevitable  corollary  of  the  Immanence  of  God,  and  that  is 
Solidarity,  that  is  universal  Brotherhood.  If  God  be  immanent  in  all,  He 
is  omnipresent,  and  a  wrong  done  to  one  is  a  wrong  inflicted  upon  all. 


WHAT  IS  THEOSOPHY?  7 

Wherever  life  is,  wherever  form  is,  there  is  God.  Nothing  can  be  shut 
out  of  the  vast  Solidarity  of  all  that  is,  and  that  Solidarity,  that  common 
life,  is  the  basis  of  Morality.  All  things  must  live  in  a  universe  where 
life  is  omnipresent,  immanent.  As  the  Immanence  of  God  is  the  basis  of 
Religion  and  justifies  man  in  his  search  after  God,  so  the  corollary  of 
universal  Solidarity,  the  unity  of  life  and  consciousness,  is  the  basis  of  all 
Morality.  You  cannot  injure  a  brother  without  injuring  yourself,  any 
more  than  you  can  put  poison  into  your  mouth  without  its  spreading 
through  the  blood  and  tissues  until  it  circulates  through  the  body  and 
poisons  the  whole  organism.  Thus  an  evil  thought  or  action  by  one  goes 
on  poisoning  the  whole  Brotherhood,  and  none  may  see  its  ending.  In 
these  two  fundamental  truths  lies  the  sure  bases  of  Religion  and  Morality. 
These  are  reproclaimed  by  Theosophy. 

Now  I  have  said  that  the  various  religions  are  methods — methods  by 
which  man  carries  on  his  search  for  God,  and  here  lies  the  justification, 
the  necessity,  for  their  variety.  For  one  method  suits  one  person,  and 
another  suits  another.  We  have  many  temperaments,  many  types  of 
mind,  and  therefore  many  different  needs.  Besides,  we  are  in  different 
stages  of  evolution.  Among  us,  some  are  grown  up,  some  are  children; 
none  are  alike.  Truth  is  everywhere  the  same,  but  there  are  hundreds  of 
different  ways  of  expressing  it,  and  yet  the  whole  is. never  perfectly  ex- 
pressed. All  these  ways  should  be  respected  by  those  who  realize  the 
two  fundamental  verities,  and  each  should  tread  unrebuked  the  way  that 
suits  him  best.  Moreover  we  cannot  afford  to  lose  any  one  of  the 
different  religions  of  the  world,  living  or  dead.  For  each  religion  has 
some  special  characteristic  perfection,  and  the  Perfect  Man  must  acquire 
each  perfection.  There  is  nothing  to  regret  in  the  variety;  rather  it  is 
matter  for  rejoicing  that  Truth  is  so  rich  and  great  that  it  can  be  seen 
and  limned  in  a  score  of  different  aspects,  and  each  aspect  beautiful.  Each 
religion  has  its  own  message  to  mankind,  each  has  something  to  give. 


8        POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

Theosophy  comes  to  the  world,  then,  as  a  peacemaker.  Why  should  we 
quarrel?  God  is  the  Centre,  and  from  any  point  of  the  circumference 
you  can  direct  your  steps  towards  Him;  yet,  in  the  stepping,  each  will 
be  taking  a  different  direction  towards  that  Centre,  according  to  the  point 
from  which  he  starts.  So  it  is  with  all  the  various  religions ;  they  are  all 
ways  to  God.  If  you  wish  to  reach  Madras,  you  may  be  coming  from  any 
one  of  the  four  points  of  the  compass,  and  you  will  be  walking  in  quite 
different  directions  though  you  will  meet  in  the  same  place.  One  of  the 
oldest  religions  has  said : 

Mankind  comes  to  Me  along  many  roads,  and  on  whatever  road  a 
man  comes,  on  that  road  do  I  welcome  him,  for  all  roads  are  Mine. 

And  the  youngest  of  the  religions  has  said : 
We  make  no  difference  between  Prophets. 

And  once  more : 

The  ways  of  God  are  as  many  as  the  breaths  of  the  children  of  men. 

Not  all  men  are  alike.  What  to  one  is  food  for  his  hunger  to  others  is 
not  even  a  stimulus.  Let  each  take  the  Bread  of  Life  under  whatever 
name  and  form  please  him  best.  Vessels  of  many  shapes  go  to  the  river, 
but  the  water  that  fills  each  is  the  same,  though  it  take  the  shape  of  the 
vessel  which  contains  it.  Let  each  drink  the  spiritual  water  from  the 
creed-vessel  he  prefers;  one  may  drink  from  the  graceful  tenderness  of 
Greek  vase,  another  from  the  sterner  lines  of  the  Egyptian ;  one  may  use 
the  chased  golden  goblet  of  an  Emperor,  another  the  curved  hands  of  the 
beggar;  what  matters  it,  so  long  as  the  parched  throat  be  cooled  with  the 
bubbling  stream?  Why  should  we  quarrel  about  the  shape  and  material 
of  the  vessel,  when  the  Water  of  Life  is  the  same  in  all? 

Such,  then,  is  the  position  of  Theosophy  in  the  world  of  religions,  and 
it  asserts  that  all  religions  are  good  in  their  own  way,  and  that  we  should 
learn  from  each,  and  use  their  differences  to  enrich  our  own  conceptions, 
instead  of  noting  them  in  order  to  combat. 


WHAT  IS  THEOSOPHY?  9 

Then  Theosophy  presents  itself  not  only  as  a  basis  of  Religion  and 
Morality,  but  also  as  a  Philosophy  of  Life,  as  possessing  knowledge 
on  the  subjects  which  will  be  dealt  with  in  succeeding  Sundays,  when  it 
will  be  necessary  to  speak  of  Great  Hierarchies  filling  up  space;  of 
agencies  visible  and  invisible;  of  the  Truth  of  Evolution  or  Reincarna- 
tion, as  we  call  it,  by  which  the  world  progresses;  of  the  Law 
of  Causation  that  links  the  whole  together;  the  law  of  action  and 
reaction — or  simply  of  action  as  it  is  called  here — the  Law  of  Karma; 
then  of  the  worlds  in  which  man  lives  and  sows  and  reaps.  These  are  the 
teachings  of  Theosophy  as  a  Philosophy  of  Life.  Further,  in  its  view  of 
the  world,  it  regards  Life  as  primary,  forms  as  secondary,  seeing  in 
forms  only  the  results  of  the  various  experiences  and  manifestations  of 
Life.  Thought,  life,  feeling  are  regarded  by  some  scientists  as  the  results 
of  the  aggregations  of  matter;  to  us  they  are  the  causes  of  the  aggrega- 
tions. The  Divine  Wisdom  starts  from  the  opposite  pole  from  that  from 
which  Haeckel  started  in  his  scientific  theories  of  evolution.  The  eminent 
scientist,  Sir  Wlliam  Crookes,  when  occupying  the  chair  of  the  British 
Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  which  twenty-seven 
years  before,  Professor  Tyndall  had  held,  reversed  the  latter's  famous 
saying;  Professor  Tyndall  had  said  that  we  must  learn  to  see  in  matter 
the  promise  and  potency  of  all  forms  of  life,  whereas  Sir  William 
Crookes  declared  that  we  must  see  in  life  the  moulder  and  shaper  of 
matter.  This  last  position  is  also  the  position  of  Theosophy.  It  is  only 
by  the  exercise  if  his  life-powers,  by  thought,  that  man  can  become  the 
master  of  his  destiny,  and,  instead  of  being  a  mere  straw  on  the  current 
of  time,  tossed  hither  and  thither  by  every  ripple  and  eddy,  can  become 
his  own  master,  "conquer  nature  by  obedience,"  and  by  knowledge  use  the 
nature  which  once  enslaved  him.  Theosophy,  then,  from  the  philosophi- 
cal standpoint,  is  idealistic,  seeing  in  matter  the  instrument  of  life,  in 
thought  the  creative  and  moulding  power. 


10       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

Then  we  come  to  deal  with  another  great  department  of  human 
thought,  namely,  Science.  Now  science  is  the  observation  of  facts,  from 
which,  set  side  by  side,  inductions  are  drawn  which  reveal  laws.  Out  of 
the  chaos  of  phenomena  it  restores  the  cosmos  of  ordered  reason.  The 
chief  difference  between  Theosophical  science  and  ordinary  modern  science 
is  that  the  latter  deals  only  with  fragments  of  the  whole,  the  physical 
phenomena  of  this  and  other  worlds,  with  what  can  be  brought  through 
the  physical  human  brain  and  senses;  hence,  very  often  its  conclusions 
are.  erroneous.  In  its  operations,  it  uses  the  senses  and  extends  them 
by  the  most  delicate  apparatus,  but  even  when  it  includes  psychical 
phenomena,  it  hesitates  to  go  beyond  that  which  manifests  through  the 
brain,  including  sleep  and  trance  manifestations.  A  few,  like  Sir  William 
Crookes,  believe  in  the  existence  of  a  consciousness  wider  than  that  which 
functions  in  the  brain ;  and  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  has  gone  so  far  as  to  repre- 
sent the  consciousness  of  man  under  the  simile  of  a  ship  in  full  sail  on  the 
ocean,  his  normal  brain-consciousness  being  as  the  submerged  part  of  the 
hull  was  to  the  rest.  But  this  is  not  orthodox  science;  a  new  method 
must  be  adopted  if  advance  is  to  be  made.  Although  science  is  on  the 
right  road,  many  of  the  phenomena  it  is  beginning  to  investigate  now-a- 
days  are  too  subtle  for  observation  by  the  normal  senses  or  by  apparatus 
however  delicate.  The  weight  of  official  science  is  against  the  wider 
outlook.  It  would  not  quite  expel  from  its  ranks  a  Sir  William  Crookes, 
however  unorthodox  his  opinions,  but  it  still  looks  askance  at  any  unusual 
investigations.  Yet  its  position  is  rather  like  that  of  a  botanist  who,  in 
examining  a  lotus-plant  in  a  pond,  was  content  to  carefully  draw  and 
classify  the  tips  of  the  leaves  appearing  above  the  water,  without  investi- 
gating the  plant  and  buds  and  roots  below  the  surface. 

Now  Theosophical  science  looks  on  the  whole  world  as  a  manifesta- 
tion of  thought  in  all  grades  of  matter.  Occult  science  knows  of  the  ex- 
istence of  higher  and  higher  kinds  of  attenuated  matter,  far  finer  than 


WHAT  IS  THEOSOPHY?  11 

the  ether  of  orthodox  science,  all  interpenetrating  each  other,  and  con- 
stituting this  vast  universe,  which  is  all  material  in  this  sense,  and  is 
capable  of  being  observed,  examined,  and  understood.  Man  is  by  no 
means  limited  to  the  physical  world  alone.  Theosophy  asserts  that  the 
human  race  has  reached  a  point  in  evolution,  when  many  of  its  children, 
to  an  increasing  degree,  can  unfold  new  senses  for  observing  the  phe- 
nomena of  finer  matter,  and  thus  discover  the  underlying  laws.  The 
powers  of  mind,  the  powers  of  perception,  will  work  not  only  through 
the  five  now  normal  senses,  but  through  others  also,  keener,  subtler,  more 
sensitive.  With  these,  science  will  be  able  to  extend  its  researches,  con- 
tinuing to  use  its  own  methods  of  observation  and  reasoning,  into  a  far 
larger  field  and  to  draw  its  conclusions  from  fuller  data.  The  observa- 
tions already  made  by  the  use  of  these  finer  senses  by  those  who  have 
developed  them  need  not  be  accepted  as  true  on  statements  as  yet  unveri- 
fied, but  they  might  be  used  as  hypotheses  on  which  to  work  and  to  ex- 
periment. Every  science  has  its  experts  and  its  conditions  of  study. 
If  a  person  went  to  an  astronomer  to  be  taught,  he  would  say:  "Do  you 
know  Mathematics?"  and  if  the  applicant  did  not  know  it  he  would  advise 
the  study  of  mathematics  as  a  preliminary  to  the  more  advanced  study  of 
astronomy.  A  man  may  navigate  by  the  Nautical  Almanac,  may  use 
tables  of  logarithms,  even  if  he  be  unable  to  construct  them  for  himself. 
But  in  this  way  he  cannot  know ;  he  can  only  take  expert  statements  as 
probably  true.  And  so  with  our  results ;  only  those  can  test  them,  who 
have  passed  though  the  necessary  preparatory  study;  but  they  might  be 
utilized  as  hints  for  research.  In  every  science,  a  student  must  be  quali- 
fied* to  study,  he  must  have  the  necessary  time  and  the  necessary  capac- 
ities if  he  would  know  at  first  hand;  if  not,  he  must  be  content  to  take 
at  second  hand  from  those  who  have  studied  and  do  know.  Every  science 
says:  "You  can  know,  if  you  will  give  time  and  patience  to  the  study, 
and  if  you  have  the  innate  capacity;"  there  are  conditions  everywhere, 
the  botanist  must  have  the  power  of  observation ;  the  musician  the  delicacy 


12       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

of  ear  and  touch;  and  so  on.  So  it  is  also  with  occult  science;  and  it 
says  further,  that  if  you  would  study  safely  in  the  subtler  worlds,  then 
you  must  purify  your  bodies,  physical,  astral  and  mental,  for  you  must 
have  pure  instruments  for  the  higher  research.  A  dirty  lens  in  telescope 
or  microscope  will  blur  the  image,  and  unclean  thoughts  and  desires  will 
blur  the  vision  of  the  investigator.  The  impure  cannot  safely  verify  or 
examine  or  intrude  into  the  higher  worlds. 

Such  then,  roughly  outlined,  is  Theosophy,  the  DIVINE  WISDOM,  as 
regards  Religion,  Philosophy  and  Science;  in  each  of  these  departments 
it  has  much  to  teach,  some  new,  living,  intelligible  thought  to  offer  to 
those  who  would  understand.  In  Religion  it  gives  the  bases  of  Religion 
and  Morality;  in  Philosophy  it  gives  a  solution  to  the  riddles  of  life  which 
have  ever  set  men's  brains  on  fire  and  broken  their  hearts ;  and  in  Science 
it  points  out  new  roads  to  knowledge.  It  makes  all  life  intelligible,  it 
explains  the  differences  in  men  and  society,  it  shows  a  way  of  collecting 
fresh  facts  from  the  illimitable  store-house  of  nature. 

Thus  Theosophy  gives  great  principles  of  conduct,  principles  capable 
of  application  to  human  life;  it  holds  up  great  ideals  which  appeal  to 
human  thought  and  feeling,  which  will  gradually  raise  humanity  out  of 
misery  and  sorrow  and  sin.  For  sin,  poverty  and  misery  are  the  fruits  of 
ignorance,  and  ignorance  is  the  cause  of  evil.  Over  all  this  sorrowful 
world,  our  "Sorrowful  Star"  as  it  has  been  called,  across  the  struggles 
of  parties,  the  quarrels  of  nations,  the  worse  conflicts  of  internecine  social 
strife,  the  misery  of  the  poor,  the  despair  of  the  man  who  cannot 
find  work  that  he  may  feed  wife  and  child,  the  sobbings  of  heart-broken 
wives  and  deserted  mistresses,  the  wailings  of  little  children,  helpless  and 
forsaken — over  all  this  rings  out  the  glad,  if  startling,  proclamation  that 
not  misery  but  happiness  is  the  natural  and  inevitable  destiny  of  man. 
Misery  grows  out  of  ignorance;  poverty  grows  out  of  ignorance;  these 
unhappy  outer  conditions  are  transitory  and  shall  pass  as  our  knowledge 


WHAT  IS  THEOSOPHY?  13 

grows.  You,  the  inner  You,  are  an  Eternal  Spirit  whose  nature  is  Bliss, 
for  God  is  bliss  and  you  are  partaker  of  the  divine  nature.  These  outer 
conditions  shall  be  moulded  by  you  to  your  own  service,  and  misery  shall 
disappear  from  your  life  when  you  have  learned  by  it  to  rise  out  of 
ignorance  into  knowledge.  Our  miseries  are  of  our  own  making,  and  we 
shall  destroy  what  we  have  created.  Offspring  of  God,  you  can  rule  the 
lower  world,  for  Spirit  becomes  master  of  matter.  Bliss  and  joy  are  your 
natural  life.  You  are  born  in  bliss,  and  plunge  temporarily  into  sorrow 
only  to  learn  what  joy  cannot  teach,  and  to  return  to  the  happiness  which 
is  your  inalienable  heritage.  Such  is  the  glad  proclamation  of  every 
Messenger  of  the  DIVINE  WISDOM.  Your  troubles,  arising  from 
ignorance,  shall  be  transcended  by  Wisdom,  for  joy  is  your  innermost 
nature ;  from  that  you  come  and  to  that  you  shall  return. 


14       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 


II. 
THE  LADDER  OF  LIVES. 

I  begin  to-day  the  first  of  the  special  departments  into  which  I  have 
divided  the  whole  large  subject  of  Theosophy,  and  I  have  called  it  "The 
Ladder  of  Lives."  I  propose  to  run  over  what  science  would  call  the 
scheme  of  evolution ;  but  this  scheme  is  much  larger  from  the  Theosophi- 
cal  standpoint  than  it  is  from  the  standpoint  of  the  ordinary  western 
Science.  Western  Science,  observing  phenomena,  only  starts  in  the 
middle  of  evolution,  and  so  needs  a  motive  power  which  shall  make  evolu- 
tion possible,  a  reason  which  shall  explain  its  method  and  its  significance. 
The  larger  science,  Occult  Science,  takes  in  the  whole  of  the  vast  series  of 
changes  which  begin  with  the  descent  of  Spirit  to  embody  itself  in  matter, 
traces  the  evolution  of  forms  through  stages  of  ever-increasing  beauty, 
complexity  and  capacity,  so  that,  within  all,  the  evolving  involved  life  is 
seen.  I  have  called  these  stages,  these  grades,  "The  Ladder  of  Lives." 
These  living  forms  occupy  successive  steps  on  the  ladder,  from  the 
mineral  to  the  throne  of  the  LOGOS  Himself.  It  is  a  veritable  Jacob's 
Ladder,  with  its  foot  in  the  mire  of  earth  and  its  highest  point  lost  in 
the  divine  Glory.  The  Hierarchies  of  living  things  are  the  rungs  of  the 
ladder,  from  the  dust  to  the  mightiest  Archangel  or  Deva.  One 
of  those  Hierarchies  is  the  human,  some  way  up  the  ladder.  The  method 
of  climbing  we  shall  study  later. 


THE  LADDER  OF  LIVES.  15 

It  is  clear  that  in  this,  as  in  all  other  sciences,  there  must  be  certain 
great  conceptions,  mother-ideas,  vital  and  productive.  These  may  be  dis- 
entangled from  the  vast  mass  of  details  filling  up  the  master-thoughts,  and 
these  can  be  placed  clearly  before  the  mind  of  any  one  who  is  willing  to 
exercise  a  certain  amount  of  patience  and  sustained  thought.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  is  a  vast  mass  of  details  filling  up  these  huge  concep- 
tions, and  the  mastery  of  that  vast  mass  of  details  means  the  devotion  of 
a  whole  life  to  a  small  portion  of  the  mass.  The  case  is  exactly  the  same 
with  Theosophical  teaching.  There  are  certain  great  conceptions  of  evo- 
lution that  I  propose  to  try  to  put  before  you  this  afternoon.  My  hope 
is  that  this  outline  will  inspire  some  of  you  with  the  wish  to  know  more ; 
this  'knowing  more'  can  only  be  attained  by  individual  study.  1  shall  give 
you  the  outline,  and  you  must  fill  up  this  outline  by  study  with  all  the 
details  that  make  every  part  of  the  outline  intelligible.  I  do  not  pretend 
that  I  can  give  you  in  the  short  compass  of  a  lecture  the  details,  which  are 
indefinite  in  number  and  almost  infinite  in  complexity.  All  I  can  do  is  to 
trace  out  the  broad  lines  for  your  guidance.  A  popular  lecture  can  merely 
trace  out  the  principal  ideas,  and  lay  before  your  minds  in  succession  cer- 
tain clearly  definite  conceptions.  No  lecture  can  take  the  place  of  study. 
People  who  learn  only  by  attending  lectures  can  never  possess  more  than 
a  superficial  knowledge  of  a  subject.  Only  a  student  can  master  the 
difficulties  of  any  subject  by  individual  and  strenuous  exertion.  Hence 
when  I  have  done  my  work,  your  work  remains  for  you  to  do.  If  you 
find  the  conceptions  fascinating,  as  many  of  us  have  found  them,  then 
must  follow  the  study  which  will  make  those  conceptions  real  to  your- 
selves. 

First,  then,  let  us  try  to  study  a  great  conception  of  the  Matter  side  of 
the  world,  the  conception  of  the  Solar  System.  I  draw  as  if  it  were  a 
circle  within  which  is  the  'universe  of  discourse' — as  the  logicians  say ;  my 
universe  of  discourse  is  our  own  Solar  System,  outside  which  we  shall  not 


16      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

go.  Both  nature  and  our  own  life  must  ever  remain  unintelligible  unless  we 
take  into  account  worlds  other  than  the  physical,  and  Theosophical  con- 
cepts must  remain  unintelligible  if  we  try  to  present  them  as  limited  to  the 
physical  world,  in  which  we  are  living;  for  this  physical  world  is  inter- 
penetrated and  interwoven  with  other  worlds,  and  in  these  interwoven 
worlds  we  are  all  living  all  the  time.  Man  is  not  a  denizen  of  one  world 
only,  but,  in  the  early  stages  of  his  evolution,  of  three  actively  and  of 
more  passively. 

Let  us  think  of  the  Solar  System  as  a  sphere,  or  ovoid,  a  large  but  cir- 
cumscribed portion  of  space,  filled  in  the  beginning — ere  the  planets  come 
into  existence — with  tenuous  homogeneous  matter,*  interstellar  matter, 
the  matter  of  space.  It  is  within  this  great  circle  of  the  Solar  System  that 
the  creative,  preservative  and  regenerative  power  of  God  is  to  guide  His 
creatures  from  the  dust  to  the  height  of  divinity.  Herein  is  our  Ladder  of 
Lives,  up  which  we  are  in  thought,  in  some  sense,  to  climb. 

The  matter  of  our  system,  with  its  various  densities,  is  the  result  of  the 
first  creative  act,  wrought  on  the  homogeneous  matter  of  space,  and  this 
creative  act  prepares  the  Field  of  Evolution,  as  I  have  sometimes  called 
it.  Matter  now  exists — as  you  know  from  your  own  experience  in  the 
physical  world — in  various  forms,  or  states.  Suppose  I  have  an  orange 
in  my  hand ;  you  can  see  the  solid  matter,  as  the  rind ;  the  liquid  matter,  as 
the  juice;  and  though  you  are  not  able  to  see  the  air,  the  gaseous  part,  you 
know  that  it  is  there,  interpenetrating  the  solid  and  the  liquid;  and  you 
know  also  that  all  three  are  interpenetrated  by  ether.  Similarly  if  I  could 
hold  the  Solar  System  as  a  ball  in  my  hand,  we  might  see  these  states  of 
matter  existing  therein,  interpenetrating  each  other ;  everywhere  physical 
matter  ,and  that  interpenetrated  with  finer,  being  to  it  as  the  liquid  to  the 
solid;  that  again  interpenetrated  with  yet  finer,  typified  by  the  gaseous, 
and  that  again  with  ether.  Here  we  go  a  step  further  than  the  science  of 
the  day  is  as  yet  prepared  to  go.  Science  recognizes  the  existence  of 
^Homogeneous'  to  us,  with  our  limited  powers  of  perception. 


THE  LADDER  OF  LIVES.  IT 

ether,  it  being  a  necessary  hypothesis  to  account  for  light,  etc.,  but  it  does 
not  yet  subdivide  it  into  various  densities.  It  studies  the  modes  of  motion 
in  the  ether,  and  gives  them  various  names,  as  the  forces  or  energies  of 
nature.  It  recognizes  that  there  are  different  modes  of  motion,  but  not 
that  these  are  in  different  densities  of  etheric  matter.  In  the  ether  there 
are  different  densities — different  as  solid  and  liquid  are  different — and 
these  yield  what  we  call  electricity,  sound,  light,  heat,  and  so  on.  (I  am 
not  forgetting  that  science  calls  sound  vibrations  of  air,  but  those  are 
secondary.) 

There  is  one  density  of  ether  the  motion  of  which  is  the  kind  of  electric- 
ity by  which  a  tram-car  moves,  the  vibrations  of  which  kill  a  human 
body.     In  that  same  kind  of  ether  are  the  vibrations  of  sound  which  set 
the  air-waves  going  which  are  sound.     Another  density  of  ether  is  thrown 
into  the  vibrations  we  call  light,  and  by  these  you  see.     There  are  others 
yet  which  are  recognised  as  the  swift  and  short  waves  which  give  the  finer 
forms  of  electricity.     There  is  a  yet  finer,  subtler,  form  of  ether  the  vibra- 
tions of  which  are  the  media  for  transmission  of  thoughts  from  brain  to 
brain.     Matter,  in  states  related  to  each  other  as  are  the  familiar  states  of 
our  own  world,  filled  up  the  whole  of  our  Solar  System  in  mighty  inter- 
penetrating spheres,  ere  the  planets  came  into  existence.  All  these  spheres 
are  material,  and  are  cognizable  by  organs  of  perception  composed  of  their 
own  elements.     Think  then  of  this  Solar  System  as  composed  of  matter, 
existing    in    various     stages  of     density;    all     the     investigations     into 
the    nature     of     matter,     into     the     nature     of     the     atom— not     only 
of  the  physical  world  but  of  all  the  other  great  spheres  as  well— must  be 
carried  on  by  suitable  organs  and  instruments.     Here  comes  in  the  endless 
complexity  of  detail  that  would  need  years  of  lives,  of  many  lives,  to 
exhaust.     But  now,  how  does  this  matter  of  many  densities  come  into 
being?     According  to  the  Theosophical  view  that  Life  is  primary  and 
matter  secondary,  the  divine  Life  forms  the  motive  power  in  every  atom 


18       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

of  matter  throughout  the  Solar  System.  The  first  mighty  Wave  of  Life 
poured  into  the  ocean  of  interstellar  matter  came  forth  from  God — as  the 
Christian  would  say;  from  the  third  Logos — as  the  Theosophist  wou: 
say;  from  Brahma — as  the  Hindus  would  say;  from  the  "Spirit  of  God 
moving  on  the  face  of  the  waters" — as  the  Hebrew  would  say;  from  the 
Creator — as  the  Muhammadan  would  say.  You  may  think  of  it  as  rolling 
round  a  mighty  circle,  descending  from  the  zenith  to  the  nadir,  ascending 
from  the  nadir  to  the  zenith  again.  This  vast  Wave  of  Life  wells  forth 
from  the  Logos  Himself  thrilling  through  the  whole  Solar  System,  break- 
ing itself  into  endless  fragments — as  the  smooth  current  dashing  itself 
over  a  precipice  breaks  into  myriads  of  separate  drops — in  order  to  be- 
come the  life-atoms  called  matter.  There  is  not  one  atom,  one  particle 
of  matter,  that  has  not  the  life  of  God  as  its  life.  There  is  nothing  that 
is  dead.  This  vast  Wave  rolling  through  the  ocean  of  homogeneous  mat- 
ter crystallizes,  as  it  were,  the  matter  into  atoms,  and  becomes  the  Spirit  in 
every  particle  of  matter;  and  of  this  living  matter  the  worlds  are  built. 
Hence  we  sometimes  speak  of  what  science  calls  matter  as  spirit-matter, 
as  Spirit  made  manifest.  There  is  not  one  particle  that  is  only  matter,  nor 
can  Spirit  manifest  itself  without  matter  as  its  vehicle.  Matter  is  the  neces- 
sary vehicle  of  manifestation  for  Spirit;  Spirit  and  matter  are  the  first 
pair;  neither  can  exist  without  the  other,  for  the  divine  Life  only  becomes 
Spirit  when  it  ensouls  matter. 

That  is  the  first  creative  action,  the  first  Life-Wave.  Having  formed 
the  atoms,  it  draws  them  together,  and  builds  up  the  numerous  aggrega- 
tions of  the  various  types  of  atoms,  and  these,  in  our  physical  world,  are 
called  elements.*  These  elements  are  the  basic  materials  for  the  building 
of  all  forms. 

It  is  interesting  to  notice  how  our  most  advanced  scientists  are  begin- 
ning to  recognize  the  presence  of  life  in  all  matter,  and  use  such  phrases 

*See  Occult  Chemistry  for  the  details  of  this  building  in  the  physical  ^yorld. 


THE  LADDER  OF  LIVES.  19 

as  the  'diseases  of  metals/  their  'fatigue,'  their  susceptibility  to  poisons  and 
intoxicants.  It  has  been  proved  that  the  life  in  metals  and  plants  responds 
similarly  to  similar  stimuli  as  does  the  life  in  animals  and  man.  I  saw 
these  responses  in  London,  demonstrated  by  the  great  Indian  chemist,  Dr. 
Jagadish  Chandra  Bose ;  you  may  remember  that  he  closed  his  noble  lec- 
ture to  a  London  scientific  audience  with  the  declaration  that  he  had  only 
proved  experimentally  the  great  truth  which  his  ancestors  had  pro- 
claimed thousands  of  years  before,  when  they  chanted  the  Vedas :  "There 
is  only  one  Life,  though  men  name  it  variously."  This  one  Life,  poured 
out  into  the  universe,  ensouls  the  matter  out  of  which  all  forms  are  to  be 
made.  This  is  the  first  root-conception  to  be  grasped  and  remembered. 
It  shows  us  the  Logos  as  the  Master-Builder,  the  Great  Architect  of  the 
Universe. 

A  second  great  Wave  of  Life  comes  forth  from  the  Logos,  the  Logos  in 
a  new  aspect,  that  of  the  builder  and  the  maintainer  of  forms — the  second 
Logos,  we  Theosophists  say ;  Vishnu,  the  Hindus  name  Him.  That  great 
Life- Wave  again  rolls  round;  from  the  zenith  to  the  nadir,  it  gives  char- 
acteristics or  qualities  to  matter,  qualities  which  enable  it  to  answer  in  dif- 
ferent ways  to  different  stimuli  from  outside;  thus  to  one  kind  of  atom 
and  its  aggregations  the  speciality  of  answering  to  changes  of  thought, 
to  another  of  response  to  changes  of  emotion  and  desire,  and  so  on.  The 
varying  powers  of  each  atom  and  its  aggregations  are  given  by  the  Life- 
Wave  on  its  downward  sweep,  until  it  reaches  the  lowest  point  of  its  huge 
circle;  then  it  turns  to  climb  upwards  from  nadir  to  zenith.  In  the  up- 
ward climbing  the  Life-Wave  begins  the  building  of  forms  out  of  the  mat- 
ter now  showing  the  qualities  that  it  has  imparted  on  the  downward  sweep. 
This  matter,  now  showing  qualities,  powers  of  response,  i.  e.,  of  internal 
rearrangement  under  the  impact  of  stimuli,  is  drawn  together  and  aggre- 
gated into  forms — mineral,  vegetable  and  animal  forms,  and  lastly  forms 
of  animal-man.     The  work  of  the  upward  sweep  is  the  building  of  forms, 


20       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

as  the  work  of  the  downward  sweep  is  the  giving  of  qualities.  This  is 
the  second  root-conception.  It  shows  us  the  Logos  as  the  Master-Crafts- 
man, and  as  He  ever  works  by  number  and  by  geometrical  designs,  He 
reveals  himself  as  the  Great  Geometrician  of  the  universe.* 

We  come  to  the  third  and  last  great  Wave  of  Life.  There  are  five 
spheres,  or  planes,  which  make  the  Field  of  Evolution.  Beyond  these  in 
rarest,  subtlest  matter  and  in  splendor  of  radiant  unimaginable  Life,  in  the 
highest  sphere,  dwells  in  the  perfection  of  His  own  nature  the  Lord  of 
the  system,  whom  the  Hindu  calls  Ishvara,  the  Lord,  impartite,  unmanifest. 
In  the  second  sphere  His  aspects  shine  out,  His  manifested  Powers,  whom 
we  called  the  Logoi  from  whom  the  Life- Waves  came,  Powers  which  build 
matter  and  forms,  and  the  Power,  the  Regenerative,  from  whom  the  third 
Life-Wave  is  to  come.  In  that  lofty  sphere  naught  may  live  that  is  not 
God,  and  there  are  the  seeds  of  Divinity,  parts  of  Himself,  emanations — • 
if  the  word  may  be  used  of  those  who  dwell  ever  in  the  bosom  of  the 
Father — which  are  to  be  human  Spirits  in  the  field  of  evolution,  the 
spheres  of  form.  These  are  to  be  rayed  down  thereinto ;  for  the  very  pur- 
pose of  the  building  of  the  worlds  is  that  these  Seeds  of  Divinity  may  grow 
through  the  many  forms  of  the  various  kingdoms,  until  they  stand  re- 
vealed, the  triumphant  Sons  of  God,  reflecting  the  splendor  whence  they 
came.  Has  it  not  been  said  in  the  East :  "Thou  art  Brahman"  ?  Has  it 
not  been  said  in  the  West :  "Be  ye  perfect,  even  as  our  Father  in  heaven  is 
perfect"?  So  splendid  is  the  object  of  human  evolution;  man  is  a  Seed 
of  God,  which  shall  grow,  when  sown  in  the  soil  of  earth,  into  the  likeness 
of  God. 

The  third  great  Wave  of  Life  consists  of  these  human  Spirits,  which 
are  sent  to  ensoul  and  utilize  the  bodies  which  have  been  prepared  for 
them  through  the  ages,  through  the  long  evolution,  the  slow  climbing, 
from  mineral  to  plant,  from  plant  to  animal,  from  animal  to  animal-man. 
Then  there  dawns  at  last  the  morning  when  the  human-divine  Spirits  that 
*"God  geometrizes,"  said  Plato. 


THE  LADDER  OF  LIVES.  21 

have  been  waiting  the  time  for  their  advent,  hover  over  the  forms  that  are 
preparing  for  them;  they  are  as  yet  unable  to  influence  them,  unable  to 
guide,  and  unable  to  control.  They  form  the  third  great  Wave  of  Life 
that  is  poured  out  into  the  worlds.  This  is  the  third  root  conception. 
Out  of  the  Most  High  the  wave  rolls  downward  into  the  forms  prepared 
for  its  coming. 

The  first  Life- Wave,  then,  made  the  matter.  The  second  Life- Wave 
gave  the  qualities  and  built  the  forms.  The  third  Life-Wave  brought  upon 
its  crest  the  fragments  of  Divinity  to  ensoul  the  forms  and  to  make  them 
tabernacles  worthy  of  God. 

Think  of  this  as  of  a  great  picture.  The  Holy  Spirit,  the  third  Person 
of  the  Christian  Trinity,  Brahma,  the  Third  Logos,  is  as  a  river  which 
breaks  itself  into  drops  by  the  force  of  its  descent;  so  the  Life  of  God  is 
poured  out  and  scatters  into  atoms  ensouled  by  Himself.  The  Life  of 
Vishnu,  the  second  Person  of  the  Christian  Trinity,  the  Wisdom,  builds 
the  forms  "mightily  and  sweetly  ordering  all  things ;"  and  the  first  Person, 
the  Father  of  the  Christian,  the  Shiva  or  Mahadeva,  of  the  Hindu,  the 
Liberator,  is  the  pourer  out  of  the  human  Spirits. 

We  will  not  deal  now  further  with  the  first  out-pouring,  the  creative 
aspect,  for  this  in  its  details  would  require  that  study  of  many  lives  to 
which  I  alluded  at  the  beginning.  We  will  consider  instead  the  second 
outpouring,  in  the  upward  sweep  of  which  is  formed  the  Ladder  of  Lives, 
that  ladder  up  which  every  one  of  us  must  climb,  up  which  each  of  us  has 
climbed  a  long  way,  must  climb  the  remainder. 

The  second  Life- Wave,  as  we  have  seen,  gave  characteristics  or  qualities 
to  matter,  imparting  to  its  compounds  and  aggregations  the  capacity  to 
answer  to  different  moods  of  consciousness.  In  the  three  lower  spheres, 
we  have  first  that  which  Clifford,  ahead  of  his  time,  called  'Mind-stuff' — 
that  is  the  stuff  the  vibrations  of  which  are  correlated  with  changes  of 
thought.     Next  the  matter  the  vibrations  of  which  respond  to  emotional 


22       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

changes,  those  of  sensation,  feeling,  passion,  desire.  Such  types  of  matter 
are  not  yet  recognized  by  modern  science.  Then  further  down — out  of 
the  desire-sphere  into  the  physical  sphere— our  physical  world,  where 
matter  is  already  evolved  to  the  point  where  it  can  respond  by  means  of 
external  action  to  the  promptings  of  thought  and  desire.  Changes  of  vi- 
bration in  the  material  vehicle  answer  every  change  of  consciousness, 
whether  of  thought  or  desire,  the  change  in  consciousness  and  the  vibra- 
tion in  matter  being  linked  in  inseparable  conjunction. 

The  great  work  of  building  up  bodies  begins  with  the  mineral  kingdom, 
through  metals,  stones,  and  what  is  known  usually  as  inorganic  matter. 
The  crust  of  the  earth  is  rich  in  stores  of  this  nature,  and  here  is  where 
the  first  efforts  of  building  begin.  Then  we  pass  on  to  crystals  which 
show  out  more  powers  of  the  organizing  life,  and  then  by  slow  steps  to  the 
crystalloids  found  in  plants,  more  plastic,  and  scarcely  either  vegetable 
or  mineral.  Then  through  a  realm  which  is  neither  vegetable  nor  animal, 
but  lies  at  the  root  of  both — the  Monista;  from  this  branch  out  the  two 
great  evolutions  of  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms.  Well-developed 
members  of  the  vegetable  kingdom,  as  forest  trees,  are  higher  in  evolution 
than  many  forms  of  animal  life. 

Now  in  the  mineral  kingdom  all  the  lessons  impressed  on  gross  matter 
have  to  be  given  very  roughly  in  order  to  cause  the  life  within  to  respond. 
Earthquakes  upheave  the  surface,  volcanoes  throw  out  great  liquid  masses, 
the  sea  dashes  itself  against  the  rocks  and  hurls  stones  together,  until  they 
are  pulverized  into  the  minutest  sand.  In  this  dense  mineral  kingdom  this 
rough  treatment  from  outside  has  the  purpose  of  awakening  a  response 
from  the  dormant  life  within.  In  the  Middle  Ages  a  wise  Sufi  Teacher 
said :  "God  sleeps  in  the  mineral."  And  indeed  life  is  not  yet  ready  to  turn 
outwards,  to  look  through  its  sheath ;  the  one  purpose  of  these  violent  im- 
pacts is  to  wake  up  the  sleeping  Spirit.  The  mineral  kingdom  shows  many 
grades  of  growth  and  of  advance.     When  the  soft  iron  moves  towards  the 


THE  LADDER  OF  LIVES.  23 

magnet,  or  another  metal  moves  away  from  it,  you  have  indications  of 
those  faint  thrillings  of  the  primary  attraction  and  repulsion  which  here- 
after will  show  forth  as  love  and  hate.  You  have  a  response  from  within 
to  that  which  is  contacted  without.  This  is  found  everywhere,  and  the 
more  close  the  study  the  more  clear  the  result.  After  countless  ages  of 
similar  and  repeated  impressions,  the  fragments  of  living  matter  give  un- 
doubted proof  of  response  from  within  to  stimulus  from  without. 

For  a  long  time  science  thought  that  life  and  consciousness  were  prod- 
ucts of  matter;  but  science  has  of  late  changed,  for  it  has  come  to  realize 
that  it  is  not  the  organ  which  makes  the  function,  but  the  function  which 
creates  the  organ.  When  we  study  a  fragment  of  living  matter,  of  proto- 
plasm, such  as  the  amoeba,  there  is  no  mouth  to  take  in  food,  no  eyes  for 
vision,  no  lungs  for  respiration,  no  heart  to  drive  the  nourishing  fluid 
through  the  body,  no  hands  with  which  to  grasp,  no  feet  with  which  to 
move.  There  is  only  craving,  desire,  and  desire  builds  the  form,  as  it 
seeks  gropingly  its  own  gratification.  In  the  Ancient  Scriptures  has  it 
not  been  said  ?  "The  Atma  desired  to  see ;  the  eye.  To  hear ;  the  ear.  To 
think ;  the  mind."  The  mouth  was  formed  by  the  craving  of  the  life  with- 
in  for  nourishment.  The  craving  was  there ;  so  the  body  at  first  wrapped 
itself  about  the  object  which  touched  it,  taking  it  in ;  this,  repeated  over  and 
over  again,  at  last  formed  a  depression,  a  buccal  cavity,  and  a  tube  for 
passage  through  the  body,  and  thus  gradually  the  mouth  and  alimentary 
system  grew  into  organization ;  the  complex  organization  grew  out  of  the 
simple  desire  of  the  life.  So  again  living  matter  desired  to  move;  it  put 
out  a  little  bit  of  its  body  in  the  desired  direction  and  pulled  the  body  up  to 
it,  and  this,  repeated  innumerable  times  through  myriads  of  examples, 
produced  the  leg  and  the  foot  for  the  purpose  of  locomotion.  As  matter 
becomes  more  and  more  ductile,  the  requisite  organs  are  fashioned  more 
and  more  suitably  in  response  to  the  inherent  requirements  of  the  life. 
Schopenhauer's  "Will  to  live"  lies  at  the  back  of  evolution,  and  implies 


24       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

the  Will  of  the  Spirit  to  make  to  itself  a  vehicle,  and  to  shape  the  organs 
it  requires  for  self-expression  as  the  life  unfolds. 

One  stream  of  life,  for  instance,  develops  herbs,  shrubs,  trees — in  the 
last  of  which  we  can  see  the  first  dawning  signs  of  mind-consciousness 
appear.  The  constant  repetition  of  the  seasons,  bringing  similar  and  long- 
continued  stimuli  year  after  year,  produces  finally  a  remembrance  of  the 
past  similar  experiences,  and  out  of  that  an  expectation  of  the  next  mem- 
ber of  the  oft-repeated  series.  Memory  begins  to  stir,  and  when  a  living 
thing  begins  to  remember  the  past,  it  also  inevitably  begins  to  expect  the 
future.  The  experiences  of  the  tree  are  repeated  year  after  year,  season 
after  season,  the  rise  of  the  sap,  the  putting  on  of  leaves,  the  heat  of  the 
sun,  the  drenching  rain,  the  alternations  of  light  and  darkness,  heat  and 
cold,  the  resistance  of  the  roots  and  branches  to  wind  and  storm,  the  fall- 
ing of  the  leaves,  the  running  down  of  the  sap,  the  period  of  inactivity  in 
the  cold  of  winter.  All  this  repeated  for  ages  rouses  in  the  tree  the 
incipient  signs  of  memory,  of  anticipation,  i.  e.,  the  dawning  of  mind-con- 
sciousness. 

So  scientists  who  are  botanists  are  talking  of  the  eyes  of  plants,  which 
enable  them  to  choose  particular  places  of  growth  and  so  on  for  suckers. 
Still  one  must  realize  that  the  type  of  consciousness  existing  in  the 
vegetable  kingdom  is  different  from  and  far  lower  than  that  found  in  the 
animal  kingdom.  These  two  lines  of  consciousness  in  the  vegetable  and 
the  animal  exist  side  by  side,  and  it  may  well  be  that  consciousness  can 
climb  so  high  in  the  vegetable  kingdom,  that  when  it  passes  over  into 
animal  forms  it  would  by  no  means  enter  at  the  bottom  but  relatively  high 
in  the  animal  ascent.  Let  us  take  this  ascent  as  though  it  were  successive 
— which  it  is  not,  and  this  is  also  shown  in  Haeckel's  Genealogy  of  Man — 
for  this  does  not  touch  the  argument.  When  the  power  of  moving  from 
place  to  place  is  enjoyed  by  a  living  creature,  its  opportunities  of  gathering 
experience  largely  increase,  for  now  it  brings  itself  into  contact  with  outer 


THE  LADDER  OF  LIVES.  25 

objects  and  does  not  merely  respond  when  they  come  to  it;  thereby  its 
"awareness"  develops  more  and  more  rapidly.  It  is  by  the  struggle  for 
existence,  by  the  tremendous  competition  in  nature  for  food,  that  the 
animal  develops  the  qualities  which  serve  for  the  bringing  up  and  protec- 
tion of  its  young;  through  its  many  vicissitudes,  by  hunting  and  being 
hunted,  it  develops  foresight,  craft,  cunning,  powers  of  self-defence, 
bravery,  and  even  higher  qualities,  which  will  eventually  make  possible 
the  coming  of  man. 

But  even  when  animal-man  appears  on  the  stage  of  life,  there  is  yet 
something  wanting,  something  lacking  for  real  Manhood. 

It  is  that  third  Wave  of  Life,  it  is  the  bringing  down  of  those  Spirits 
which  have  been  waiting  to  take  up  their  habitation  in  the  forms  that  have 
been  prepared  for  their  reception,  now  the  animal-man.  These  forms  are 
naturally  crude  and  rough  at  first,  but  they  are  suitable  for  the  first  efforts 
of  the  forming  Spirit,  to  evolve  the  man  from  the  savage  to  the  divine 
state.  He  is  now  on  the  first  human  rung  of  the  Ladder  of  Lives;  the 
Hierarchy  of  Man  begins  to  manifest.  He  will  gradually  pass  out  of 
savagery  into  a  low  state  of  civilization,  and  will  then  slowly  climb,  step 
by  step  into  a  higher.  And  here  a  problem  arises :  What  is  the  method  of 
this  advance?  There  is  no  apparent  reason  why  a  savage  should  pass 
from  the  stage  of  savagery  into  that  of  civilization,  or  again  why  a  civiliza- 
tion which  has  reached  a  high  state  should  become  disorganized  and 
relapse  into  savagery.  Yet  these  things  happen  and  there  must  be  a  cause. 
The  causes  will  be  dealt  with  in  a  subsequent  lecture. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  main  stages  of  the  unfolding  of  consciousness 
which  mark  the  steps  on  the  Ladder  of  Lives  occupied  by  the  Hierarchy  of 
Man — once  more  the  broad  outlines  only,  with  infinite  variety  of  detail 
within  each  class.  The  steps  are  four,  so  well  described  by  Patanjali. 
You  may  find  each  type  among  your  own  acquaintances. 

I.    The  mind  is  sufficiently  developed  to  be  alert,  but  is  continually 


26      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

changing  the  object  of  its  attention;  first  one  thing  attracts  it,  then  that 
is  dropped  and  another  becomes  the  sole  delight,  and  so  on  and  on.  It  is 
the  mind  in  the  child-stage  of  its  long  unfolding,  and  each  new  toy  is 
eagerly  grasped.  Patanjali  aptly  terms  it  the  "Butterfly  mind,"  for  the 
mind,  like  a  butterfly,  darts  from  flower  to  flower,  hovers  dancing  in  the 
air,  with  no  stable  purpose  guiding  its  flights.  Such  is  the  child-mind  in 
many  grown-up  bodies,  awake  to  the  world  around  it,  but  not  yet  brought 
under  obedience  by  its  owner,  the  Spirit. 

II.  The  child-mind  grows  into  the  mind  of  the  youth,  full  of  surging 
emotions.  Ideals  begin  to  attract,  but  there  is  little  stability  or  clear 
understanding.  It  is  full  of  hasty  impulses,  irrationalized  longings,  con- 
fused and  bewildered  thoughts.  It  is  the  stage  of  confusion,  of  illusions, 
of  glamor,  the  "confused  mind"  of  Patanjali. 

III.  Then  follows  the  stage  of  the  man,  whose  mind  is  dominated  by  a 
fixed  idea;  it  may  be  ambition,  philanthropy,  patriotism,  love  of  truth. 
The  idea  may  be  of  different  kinds,  but  it  grips  the  man.  All  he  does,  all 
he  thinks,  all  he  aims  at,  is  subservient  to  it.  If  it  is  ambition,  he  chooses 
his  friends  as  they  can  serve  his  object;  he  plans,  schemes,  toils,  all  with 
the  one  object  of  gaining  power.  If  gripped  by  patriotism,  he  becomes  a 
hero;  if  by  love  of  truth,  in  troublous  times,  a  martyr.  No  reason,  no 
argument,  no  persuasion,  no  appeals  to  the  ordinary  motives  that  sway 
men  can  divert  him  from  his  purpose.  I  came  across  such  a  man  in 
America,  dominated  by  the  idea  of  geometrical  forms  and  their  uses ;  he 
could  think  of,  talk  of,  nothing  else.  Such  a  one,  says  Patanjali,  is 
becoming  fit  for  Yoga. 

IV.  In  the  fourth  stage  the  idea  no  longer  obsesses  the  man,  but  the 
man  becomes  master  of  the  idea,  the  idea  becomes  his  servant.  With  all 
the  concentration  of  will  and  purpose  gained  in  the  third  stage,  he  is  now 
able  to  choose  his  object  and  direct  his  forces  to  its  realization.  Only 
when  this  stage  is  reached,  can  a  man  make  real  progress  in  the  higher 


THE  LADDER  OF  LIVES.  27 

life,  the  life  which  reaches  human  perfection.  The  hero  or  the  martyr 
can  now  become  the  Saint,  the  Seer,  the  Portal  of  Initiation  is  before  him. 

Now  he  passes  through  that  Portal  and  climbs  the  remaining  human 
rungs  of  the  Ladder  with  ever-increasing  swiftness,  until  he  stands  at  the 
threshold  of  superhuman  progress,  reaches  the  side  of  those  lofty  Beings 
whom  we  call  Masters,  and  becomes  the  Perfect  Man.  Then  before  him 
opens  out  another  and  more  splendid  evolution;  high  above  him  on  the 
Ladder  stand  the  superhuman  Hierarchies  in  dazzling  splendor,  and, 
almost  lost  in  light,  stand  the  Christs,  the  Buddhas,  the  Manus,  of  past 
ages.  Would  he  stand  where  They  are  standing?  He  might  leave  the 
world  and  stand  in  glorious  strength  and  dignity  among  the  Hierarchies 
of  living  Beings  that  rule  and  guide  the  worlds,  and  dwell  in  the  vast 
fields  of  space.  Great  and  mighty  are  They,  and  wonderful  and  necessary 
Their  work.  But  if  he  would  climb  to  the  loftiest  rung  open  to  our 
humanity,  then  he  must  not  quit  the  world,  whose  sorrowful  cries  have 
spurred  him  to  his  upward  way.  "Canst  thou  forget  compassion  ?"  whis- 
pers the  Voice  of  the  Silence.  So  He  returns  again  across  the  gulf,  wears 
yet  the  fetters  of  the  flesh,  the  burden  of  gross  matter,  and  gives  Himself 
to  be  a  Savior  of  man,  a  Guardian  of  Humanity.  He  climbs  the  rungs  of 
the  Ladder  to  the  height  of  the  Bodhisattva,  the  Christ,  the  Buddha,  until 
he  vanishes  in  the  Glory,  to  return  again,  perhaps,  in  some  future  world, 
as  an  Avatara,  a  divine  Incarnation. 

Such  is  the  Ladder  of  Lives,  as  seen  from  our  earth  and  the  worlds 
interlinked  with  it.  On  some  of  the  rungs  of  that  Ladder  we  all  are 
standing,  you  and  I,  every  one  of  us,  whatever  we  may  be.  Many  a  rung 
lies  below  us ;  many  a  rung  lies  above  us.  We  may  be  climbing  slowly  or 
rapidly;  there  is  time  enough  for  all,  for  the  veriest  laggard,  there  is 
power  enough  for  each,  for  in  the  heart  of  each  is  God.  There  is  nothing 
that  can  change  our  ultimate  destiny,  nothing  which  can  finally  frustrate 
the  will  of  the  God  within.     We  may  play  in  the  meadows  of  life  like 


28       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

children,  and  linger  long  in  "the  primrose  paths  of  pleasure,"  but  the  God 
within  cannot  be  finally  denied.  He  is  very  patient,  because  He  is  eternal, 
and  because  He  is  omnipotent  in  power.  His  will  is  unchangeable  and 
sure,  and  He  is  our  innermost  Self;  hence  the  destiny  of  man  is  certain, 
and,  as  I  told  you  last  Sunday,  it  is  Purity  and  Bliss. 

Some  of  you  have  dreamed  of  endless  suffering,  of  endless  sin,  and  have 
writhed  under  the  nightmare  of  an  everlasting  hell.  But  God  is  every- 
where; His  Essence  is  Joy  and  Light  and  Love,  and  there  is  no  such 
thing  in  His  Being  as  unending  evil  and  unending  sorrow. 

But  you  must  climb  the  Ladder  for  yourselves,  and  if  you  delay  too 
unreasonably,  if  you  try  not  to  climb  at  all,  you  may  so  retard  the  course 
of  your  evolution  that  you  will  be  unfitted  for  the  upward-climbing  race 
of  which  you  are  apart;  and  then  will  come  friction,  then  pain,  and  you 
sluggish  vehicles  will  clash  with  the  more  evolved  vehicles  around  you,  and 
the  God  in  you  will  manifest  as  pain  and  suffering  and  not  as  joy.  Yon 
may  even  delay  so  long  as  to  unfit  yourself  to  go  on  with  your  race,  and 
you  may  drop  out  of  the  present  evolution  and  sleep  through  long  ages. 
But  at  last,  at  last,  your  lower  nature  will  learn  its  lesson,  and  set  itself 
in  harmony  with  the  inner. 

Truly  is  there  much  to  climb,  yet  Life  is  endless.  Truly  we  stand  at 
many  stages,  yet  Life  is  one.  And  because  the  Life  in  all  is  one,  therefore 
we  all  are  brethren. 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY.  29 


III. 
REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY. 

In  listening  as  I  sketched  for  you  last  Sunday  the  enormous  sweep  of 
evolution,  as  I  traced  in  rough  outline  the  way  in  which  the  divine  Life 
comes  down  into  matter,  ensouls  every  particle,  builds  up  out  of  that 
ensouled  matter  the  forms  of  every  description,  makes  those  forms  more 
and  more  complex,  more  and  more  sensitive ;  then,  as  I  traced  the  unfold- 
ing of  consciousness  from  rung  to  rung  up  the  Ladder  of  Lives,  showing 
how  the  consciousness  in  man  unfolded  its  powers  through  the  various 
stages  mentioned  by  Patanjali ;  then  up  to  the  Portal  of  Initiation ;  through 
that  to  the  superhuman  evolution  which  comes  after  Masterhood ;  onwards 
still  further  from  the  Man  made  perfect  until  the  superhuman  being  is 
lost  in  the  light  that  veils  such  Great  Ones  as  the  Bodhisattvas,  the  Christs, 
the  Buddhas  of  humanity— some  of  you  surely  must  have  asked  your- 
selves :  What  is  the  method  of  the  climbing?  how  is  it  possible  from  the 
mire  of  earth  to  climb  upward  and  upward  ever,  until  the  climber  is  lost 
in  the  Deity?  what  the  method,  what  the  fashion  of  evolution?  It  is 
these  questions,  so  natural  and  inevitable,  which  I  am  going  to  try  to 
answer  today  and  this  day  week. 

I  have  divided  my  subject  into  two  parts,  dealing  today  only  with  the 
necessity  for  reincarnation.  I  want  to  show  that  it  is  inevitable,  rational, 
and  a  fact  in  nature,  and  then  next  week  to  show  how  it  answers  the 
problems  of  life,  to  show  how  it  explains  differences  in  life,  the  riddle,  as 


30       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

I  have  sometimes  called  it,  of  love  and  hate,  the  reason  for  friendship  and 
enmity,  the  strong  links  that  draw  us  together  and  drive  us  apart ;  these 
questions  I  shall  try  to  answer  next  Sunday;  today  I  deal  with  its 
necessity. 

The  work  to  be  done  is  so  immense,  the  ground  to  be  covered  so  incal- 
culably large,  that  some  method  which  is  rational,  logical,  and  intelligible 
seems  to  be  needed,  in  order  that  we  may  be  able  to  understand  how  such 
progress  can  be  made  by  man;  for,  looking  at  man  as  we  see  him  in  this 
life,  with  the  small  span  of  years  that  comes  between  the  first  cry  of  the 
babe  and  the  last  sigh  of  the  dying,  so  brief  a  time  and  with  so  much  to 
do,  so  vast  a  task,  and  so  short  a  span — a  work  so  great  must  need  a 
method  extended  and  rational,  for  the  whole  world  is  rational,  being 
ordered  by  the  Supreme  Wisdom  as  well  as  sustained  by  infinite  Love. 

Now  what  is  the  meaning  of  reincarnation?  We  do  not  use  the  word 
when  we  are  dealing  with  the  mineral,  the  vegetable  and  the  animal ;  the 
methods  of  evolution  there  are  profoundly  interesting,  but  are  so  compli- 
cated that  if  I  dealt  with  them  I  should  leave  myself  no  time  for  the 
special  subject  of  today.  I  can  only  briefly  say  that  what  we  may  call  the 
embryonic  Spirits,  those  that  are  to  be  human,  hover  over  these  lower 
kingdoms,  waiting  the  time  when  the  forms  shall  be  fitted  for  their  definite 
dwelling-places ;  step  by  step,  grade  by  grade — if  we  care  to  give  the  time 
and  take  the  trouble — we  can  watch  the  methods  of  evolution  in  these 
lower  worlds.  But  reincarnation,  as  it  has  been  used  in  history,  whether 
in  ancient  religions  or  modern  Theosophy,  has  a  very  clear  and  definite 
meaning.  It  means  that  man  is  a  spiritual  being  clothed  in  bodies  made  of 
matter ;  the  man  is  the  spiritual  intelligence,  the  bodies  are  only  a  garment. 
As  one  of  you  may  clothe  yourself  in  a  coat  or  a  cloth,  but  not  regard 
that  garment  as  yourself,  so  does  a  spiritual  intelligence  clothe  himself  in 
garments  of  matter,  the  bodies ;  but  these  are  not  the  man,  any  more  than 
your  clothes  are  yourselves.    This  spiritual  intelligence,  which  is  to  unfold* 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY.  31 

all  his  powers,  comes  to  gain  experience  in  order  that  the  divine  capacities 
in  him  may  thereby  be  unfolded.  His  natural  dwelling-place  is  in  the 
higher  and  spiritual  regions ;  your  bodies  are  born  of  earth,  but  you  are 
born  in  the  higher  worlds;  the  Christian  phrase,  "Your  citizenship  is  in 
heaven,"  is  a  literal  truth;  a  man  is  a  citizen  of  his  native  country,  and 
men  are  not  citizens  of  earth  but  of  heaven;  there  is  their  birth-place, 
their  natural  habitat  and  their  home.  Just  as  a  bird  soaring  in  the  air  may 
dive  down  into  the  water  to  catch  his  prey,  and  then  rise  again  into  his 
own  habitat,  so  it  is  with  the  Spirit  that  is  man ;  his  home  is  in  the  heavenly 
worlds;  he  plunges  down  to  earth  to  gain  the  experience  which  is  the 
nourishment  for  the  Spirit's  unfolding;  he  carries  it  home  for  assimilation 
into  innate  capacity  and  power ;  and  only  when  the  experience  of  one  life 
is  assimilated  does  he  return  to  earth  for  another  life,  in  order  to  gain 
more. 

And  this  conception  of  a  man  as  a  spiritual  being  belonging  to  the  higher 
worlds  lies  at  the  base  of  the  thought  of  reincarnation.  He  comes  to 
earth,  takes  a  body  which  there  is  prepared  for  him ;  he  is  not  yet  manifest- 
ly divine;  he  has  to  learn  to  master  matter  by  long  experience  and  by 
many  lessons.  He  comes  into  the  body  of  the  savage,  wherein  his  ex- 
periences are  crude  and  rough  indeed,  but  yet  yield  lessons  difficult  enough 
for  him  to  learn — the  first  lessons  of  human  experience.  He  passes  away 
to  the  other  side  of  death  to  learn  by  the  lessons  of  pain  the  errors  which 
he  has  made,  and  by  the  lessons  of  enjoyment  the  right  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings he  has  had,  and  during  the  later  part  of  that  post-mortem  life  he 
assimilates  what  he  gathered  on  earth.  Having  changed  the  experiences 
into  powers,  into  capacities  mental  and  moral,  he  comes  back  and  enters 
into  a  better  body,  suitable  to  the  more  unfolded  conditions  of  the  Spirit 
which  is  himself.  He  goes  with  this  through  his  next  experience  of  earthly 
life,  again  changing  experiences  into  capacities  in  the  other  worlds,  the 
after-death  life  lengthening  as  he  evolves,  and  so  on,  and  on,  and  on,  and 
on,  until  he  has  climbed  from  the  point  of  the  savage  up  to  the  point  where 


32      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

he  has  become  the  Man  made  perfect,  whom  we  call  a  Master.  It  is  a 
long  life  composed  of  many  days,  in  which  each  day  is  what  we  term  a 
life;  and  just  as  a  man  is  one  man  though  he  lives  through  many  days  of 
earthly  life,  so  is  the  man  one  man  to  whom  every  life  is  but  a  day  in  his 
long  pilgrimage.  The  same  man  who  sowed  is  he  who  reaps ;  the  same 
man  who  incurred  debts  is  he  who  pays ;  justice,  unchanging  justice,  rules 
the  worlds,  justice  that  demands  the  payment  of  a  debt  incurred,  justice 
that- gives  the  reward  of  a  virtue  achieved.  Thus  going  on  life  after  life, 
his  past  expressing  itself  as  character  and  as  conscience,  he  becomes  at 
length  the  Perfect  Man.  At  that  stage  reincarnation  finishes  for  him ;  no 
longer  need  he  be  born  into  the  world,  for  he  has  learned  its  lessons ;  and 
just  as  you  send  your  boy,  when  he  has  finished  with  the  school,  to  the 
college  to  learn  the  higher  lessons,  so  is  it  with  man.  In  this  world  and  in 
the  two  connected  with  it,  man  is,  as  it  were,  in  school ;  having  learned  his 
lessons,  having  learned  all  that  these  worlds  can  teach,  he  becomes  what  is 
called  the  Ashaiksha,  or  Aseka,  Adept,  the  man  who  is  no  longer  a  pupil, 
he  who  has  no  more  to  learn.  Then,  and  then  only,  can  he  be  released 
from  the  wheel  of  births  and  deaths,  to  pass  on  to  a  magnificent  super- 
human evolution,  in  which  his  now  unfolded  consciousness  scales  incon- 
ceivable heights,  until  he  reaches  union  with  Deity  Himself. 

This,  then,  is  what  is  meant  by  reincarnation.  I  must  try  to  show  why 
it  is  necessary  for  men. 

The  necessity  that  I  will  put  to  you  is  threefold.  I.  It  is  necessary 
from  the  logical  standpoint,  to  satisfy  the  reason.  Without  it,  life  is  a 
hopeless  riddle,  a  problem  which  defies  solution.  There  is  no  suffering 
keener  and  sharper  to  the  intelligence  than  the  sense  that  everything 
around  is  hopelessly  unintelligible.  We  can  bear  everything,  if  we  can 
understand  it.  It  is  not  pain  and  sorrow  which  is  the  real  misery  of 
human  life;  the  real  misery  comes  from  the  intelligence  groping  in  the 
dark  amid  objects  which  it  cannot  understand;  from  problems  which  seem 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY.  33 

incapable  of  solution  pressing  on  brain  and  heart — the  intolerable  anguish 
of  the  mind,  faced  by  that  which  it  cannot  understand,  till  it  drops  back 
despairing  and  hopeless ;  there  seems  no  reason  to  be  found  in  the  tangled 
world.  Where  there  is  no  reason,  no  order,  there  can  be  no  hope.  But 
reincarnation  makes  all  life  intelligible;  a  flood  of  light  pours  over  human 
life,  and  we  can  see  it  in  its  inception,  its  evolution  and  its  goal. 

II.  Reincarnation  is  necessary  scientifically.  The  science  of  the  day 
can  no  longer  answer  the  questions  pressed  upon  it.  It  thought  it  could 
answer  these  questions  twenty  or  thirty  years  ago.  Darwin  thought  he 
had  answered  them.  But  no  scientific  man  will  tell  you  today  that  the 
Darwinian  hypothesis  can  be  accepted  in  all  its  main  principles  as  solving 
many  of  the  most  important  problems  of  human  evolution.  Science  to-day 
is  dumb  before  them.    It  has  lost  one  solution ;  it  has  not  found  another. 

III.  Reincarnation  is  necessary  morally,  and  to  some  this  covers  the 
most  important  problems  of  all.  Some  people  are  content  to  live  in  an 
intellectual  fog,  and  seem  to  find  no  trouble  in  breathing  it;  but  no  one 
who  is  really  good  at  heart  can  face  without  anguish  the  moral  problems 
of  life,  unless  indeed  they  know  reincarnation,  and  then  they  realize  that 
all  is  "very  good."  For  the  sake  of  Reason,  of  Science,  and  of  Morality, 
reincarnation  is  necessary,  inevitable;  and  this  I  shall  now  proceed  to 
try  to  prove. 

I.  You  remember  that  verse  that  I  quoted  last  Sunday,  where  it  is  said 
in  the  Hebrew  Apocrypha  that  Wisdom  built  the  worlds — Wisdom  "sweet- 
ly and  mightily  ordering  all  things";  that  Wisdom,  which  the  Christian 
personifies  into  the  Second  Person  of  the  Trinity,  whom  the  Hindu  speaks 
of  as  Vishnu.  He  is  the  Perfect  Reason,  and  the  universe  He  builds  must 
be  perfectly  reasonable  also. 

Let  us  look  at  a  primeval  savage,  and  try  for  a  moment  to  realize  what 
he  is.  Take  any  savage  of  the  lowest  type;  the  aborigines  of  Australia, 
the  Veddhas  of  Ceylon,  the  hairy  men  of  Borneo — these  are  scarcely 
human,  and  yet  they  are  human;  their  language  is  more  of  signs  and  of 


34       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

sounds  expressive  of  emotion  than  of  words;  it  really  is  little  better  than 
the  language  of  an  ape,  that  some  have  learned  to  reproduce. 

Try  to  realize  him,  mentally  and  morally;  he  has  practically  no  mind 
and  no  morals,  only  the  germs  of  them.  You  can  read  about  such  men  in 
the  records  of  the  voyages  of  travelers,  how  some  of  them  can  only  count 
one,  two,  three,  more.  But  the  cat  can  do  as  much  as  that  with  its  kittens, 
and  a  hen  almost  with  its  eggs.  There  is  a  story  told  of  how  the  Aus- 
tralian Government,  in  trying  to  preserve  the  aborigines,  gave  them  blan- 
kets, and  it  is  said  that  in  the  mornings,  when  the  sun  was  warm,  not 
realizing  that  the  night  would  come  again,  they  would  change  away  their 
blankets  for  other  things.  The  difficulty  arose  of  a  store  of  blankets  that 
had  always  to  be  renewed;  so  low  were  they  intellectually.  Morally? 
They  were  quite  prepared  to  take  the  most  handy  and  convenient  person 
for  the  next  meal.  Darwin  recorded  a  case  of  a  man  who  found  his  wife 
the  most  convenient  thing  for  his  dinner,  and  when  a  missionary  tried  to 
make  him  understand  that  it  was  a  wrong  thing  to  do,  he  answered,  rub- 
bing himself  in  satisfaction:  "I  assure  you  she  was  very  good."  The 
poor  missionary  tried  to  make  him  understand  that  good  eating  and  good 
morals  were  not  identical,  but  failed.  The  moral  sense  was  not  yet 
evolved.  Savages  eat  their  parents  when  they  are  no  longer  useful,  and 
their  children,  because  they  are  not  yet  useful.  They  murder,  they  rob, 
they  drink.  There  the  savage  is — God-made,  all  the  religions  tell  us. 
What  are  you  going  to  do  with  him  on  the  other  side  of  death  ?  "What 
could  you  do  with  him  in  heaven?  Yet  it  would  be  hardly  fair  to  send  him 
to  hell,  as  he  did  not  make  himself.  Is  that  narrow,  brutal  life  all  that  the 
world  has  to  give  him,  the  world  which  to  some  of  us  is  so  fair  and  won- 
derful a  thing?  Is  that  poor  inchoate  mind  of  his  to  be  the  only  heritage 
of  that  child  of  man,  that  offspring  of  the  humanity  which  produces  saints 
and  heroes  and  geniuses?  Is  that  all  he  is  to  know  of  this  marvelous 
world,  of  all  the  beauty  and  grandeur  and  the  possibilities  of  life?  What 
can  you  do  with  him?     Ask  yourself,  and  it  will  bring  you  to  consider 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY.  35 

reincarnation.  Let  us  look  at  him  in  the  light  of  reincarnation.  He  has 
murdered  his  wife,  he  has  probably  murdered  various  companions;  he 
has  slain  when  strong  enough,  he  has  robbed  when  strong  enough;  yet 
he  cannot  be  called  criminal ;  he  is  only  unmoral.  He  dies.  Let  us  suppose 
that  he  is  knocked  on  the  head  by  another  savage,  stronger  than  himself, 
and  he  dies.  But  he  is  not  really  dead;  only  his  body  has  been  struck 
away,  and  he  has  passed  into  the  intermediate  world  between  earth  and 
heaven ;  he  discovers  that  the  people  he  killed  are  living ;  he  meets  again 
all  the  people  with  whom  he  has  had  troubled  relations.  They  are  many 
and  he  is  only  one ;  and  they  have  not  forgotten  the  past  any  more  than 
he  has ;  and  so  they  have  no  very  pleasant  welcome  for  him  on  the  other 
side.  He  learns  certain  lessons,  though  few :  if  you  murder  a  man  today, 
you  will  meet  him  tomorrow ;  if  you  eat  your  wife  today,  she  will  be  no 
pleasant  mate  when  she  meets  you  elsewhere ;  your  old  mother  and  father 
whom  you  slew  in  their  weakness  are  alive  again  here,  and  at  an  advantage 
as  having  been  longer  on  the  other  side,  while  you  are  a  newcomer  and 
a  stranger,  frightened  and  bewildered.  He  begins  to  learn  some  of  his 
lessons.  I  do  not  say  he  learns  them  all  in  that  one  experience ;  he  comes 
to  earth-life  and  out  of  it  over  and  over  and  over  again,  until  at  last  the 
early  lessons  of  life  are  graven  into  the  Spirit,  until  he  learns  that  it  is 
not  well  to  murder  and  to  steal,  until  he  dimly  begins  to  recognize  a  law 
which  gives  to  every  man  according  to  his  works. 

But  these  are  not  his  only  after-death  experiences.  He  will  have  had, 
perhaps,  for  the  woman  who  was  his  mate,  some  little  touch  of  affection, 
before  the  greater  need  of  hunger  overbore  it.  That  little  germ  cannot  die, 
for  nothing  dies  in  a  universe  of  Law.  That  little  seed  of  good  begins  to 
grow,  and  makes  him  happy,  and  later  on  when  he  carries  more  of  good 
with  him,  he  takes  it  on  into  the  higher  heavenly  world,  and  there  changes 
it  into  a  moral  quality,  with  which  he  returns ;  he  brings  with  him  to  each 
rebirth  an  increasing  tendency  to  hesitate  before  slaying,  to  agree  if  he  is 
told  that  murder  is  wrong,  and — to  run  over  a  large  number  of  lives — 


36      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

that  is  how  he  grows  a  little  more  civilized  and  can  live  in  a  tribe,  and 
respect  the  law  of  the  tribe  as  right,  as  a  proper  limitation  and  restriction. 
He  has  gathered  the  fruit  of  experience,  and  it  has  nourished  him;  he  has 
accumulated  materials  and  they  are  wrought  into  his  life ;  and  he  goes  on, 
life  after  life,  until  he  comes  to  the  point  at  which  many  of  our  children 
are  being  born  to-day.  The  great  difference  between  our  child  and  that 
of  the  savage  is  that  ours  answers  to  a  moral  teaching  or  ideal  when  it  is 
put  before  him,  and  the  child  of  the  savage  does  not.  I  have  come  across 
a  case  in  which  a  savage  babe,  taken  from  a  village  which  had  been 
destroyed  and  all  the  inhabitants  slain,  brought  over  to  England  by  a 
kindly  missionary  lady,  was  found  unable,  despite  all  the  advantage  of 
moral  surroundings  and  teachings,  to  respond  to  the  most  elementary 
moral  ideas ;  there  was  nothing  in  her  which  could  answer  to  all  the  efforts 
and  appeals  of  her  instructor.  It  is  true  that  there  are  some  that  are  the 
degraded  remnants  of  a  past  civilization  which  was  higher  than  their 
present  state,  souls  a  little  older  would  be  there,  and  then  you  may  have 
a  certain,  but  a  very  limited,  amount  of  moral  response.  But  take  your 
own  child;  you  tell  it  that  it  is  wrong  to  take  by  force  the  toy  of  its 
younger  and  weaker  brother  or  sister,  and  the  child  understands.  You 
say  it  has  a  conscience.  True,  but  conscience  is  not  the  gift  of  God,  but 
the  outcome  of  experience ;  your  child  brings  with  him  the  harvest  of  his 
past,  the  sense  of  right  and  wrong,  the  tendency  to  approve  or  condemn. 
You  take  advantage  of  this  tendency ;  you  have  not  to  do  with  a  new-born 
soul,  but  with  one  who  has  passed  through  many  lives.  The  child  of  the 
civilized  man  brings  into  the  world  a  ready-formed  character,  as  any  one 
who  has  to  do  with  children  can  observe.  Character  is  the  stock-in- 
trade  with  which  each  begins  his  present  life,  and  the  civilized  man  under- 
stands when  he  is  told  that  he  must  not  take  his  brother's  life  nor  his 
possessions.  And  so  on  and  on,  every  life  getting  fuller  and  fuller,  and 
the  life  on  the  other  side  of  death  growing  longer  and  longer.  When  one 
of  yourselves  passes  over,  what  will  you  take  with  you  as  harvest,  to  use 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY.  37 

in  the  other  world?  Certain  errors  will  meet  you  on  the  other  side,  and 
will  cause  suffering — the  basis  of  truth  in  all  the  terrible  stories  of  hell. 
When  you  had  learned  your  mistakes,  you  will  pass  on  into  the  heavenly 
world.  There  everything  of  good  that  you  did  in  this  life  will  be  with 
you,  the  jewels  to  set  in  your  crown ;  every  aspiration,  every  hope,  every- 
thing noble  and  pure  and  high,  you  take  with  you  into  the  heavenly  world> 
and  these  are  the  seeds  of  the  qualities  you  will  there  grow  and  develop 
in  yourself.  As  the  sculptor  carves  his  statue  out  of  the  marble  block, 
and  according  to  the  quality  of  the  marble  and  the  skill  of  the  sculptor 
will  be  the  finished  work,  so  it  is  with  you.  The  marble  is  the  experience 
that  you  carry  with  you  to  that  world ;  your  inner  living  Spirit  is  the 
sculptor  that  carves  the  marble  into  character;  hence  the  importance  of 
the  earthly  life  that  gives  the  material,  for  according  to  the  purity  of  the 
stone  will  be  the  color  of  the  statue,  or,  to  use  another  simile,  according 
to  the  richness  of  the  sowing  will  be  the  harvest  you  will  reap.  You  see 
how  by  the  law  of  reincarnation  comes  the  opportunity  enabling  a  man  to 
build  himself ;  how  the  experiences  are,  life  after  life,  stored  up  and  trans- 
muted into  qualities ;  how  at  each  new  stage  of  his  pilgrimage,  he  grows, 
gathering  and  crystallizing  these  experiences  into  faculties.  Every  virtue 
you  have,  you  have  built  during  your  life  of  bliss  in  heaven;  every  defect 
marks  a  virtue  still  to  be  acquired ;  there  is  time  enough  for  the  slowest  of 
us ;  hence  our  triumph  is  sure  and  the  ultimate  result  is  certain.  You  are 
the  masters  of  your  future  character  and  therefore  of  your  destiny.  That 
is  one  line  of  argument  for  reincarnation  given  by  Theosophy;  the  neces- 
sity of  building  the  savage  into  the  Sage,  the  embryonic  man  into  the 
triumphant  Son  of  God. 

That  is  not  the  only  necessity.  Take  the  case  of  a  new-born  child  who 
dies  shortly  after  birth.  Suppose  that  reincarnation  is  not  true,  what  is 
the  use  of  that  brief  hour  of  life?  If  you  take  the  ordinary  Christian 
theory — I  take  Christianity  because  it  has  lost  reincarnation,  though  it 
once  had  it,  and  is  now  recovering  it — how  can  you  explain  the  mystery 


38       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

of  this  babe  that  dies?  Is  human  life,  the  experience  gained  on  earth,  of 
any  permanent  value  or  not?  If  you  say  that  it  is,  and  that  the  experience 
will  be  valuable  to  you  during  your  immortal  life,  then  that  unfortunate 
child  has  been  for  ever  deprived  of  its  opportunity  of  gathering  such 
experience,  and  can  never  make  up  for  that  loss.  Unless  it  returns  to 
earth  for  another  birth,  then  that  little  one  has  been  robbed  of  the  price- 
less heritage  of  human  life,  and  no  heaven  can  make  up  for  it,  for  the 
earthly  experience  cannot  be  had  there,  and  it  remains  the  poorer  through- 
out everlasting  ages.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  say  that  the  babe  loses 
nothing,  then,  if  it  be  true  that  our  fate  forever  depends  upon  the  outcome 
of  this  human  life,  it  is  we  who  have  the  grievance  and  not  the  babe  who 
died;  for  we  who  live  on  for  a  long  life,  have  to  go  through  trouble,  misery 
and  sin,  and  we  run  the  risk  of  going  to  hell  at  last,  whereas  the  babe  runs 
no  risks  and  has  no  misery,  and  yet  is  as  well  off  in  the  end  as  we  are.  The 
whole  thing  at  once  becomes  unintelligible.  But  people  say  it  is  a  mystery, 
and  that  we  must  not  pry  into  God's  purposes,  for  that  is  not  allowed.  It 
is  such  answers  that  make  sceptics.  It  is  useless  to  tell  people  not  "to 
pry,"  when  they  have  been  given  an  intellect  for  the  very  purpose  of 
prying.  There  is  nothing  that  man  has  not  the  right  to  study  ;  until  he  has 
studied,  he  cannot  know  whether  he  is  able  to  understand  or  not.  All 
questions  are  justifiable  to  the  seeker  for  truth. 

Let  us  leave  our  savage  and  our  babe.  There  is  another  difficulty. 
What  is  the  use  of  all  the  qualities  that  we  build  up,  even  in  one  life,  with 
effort  and  suffering?  A  man  goes  through  a  long  life  and  becomes  wise; 
we  ask  the  counsel  of  the  aged,  and  we  find  his  advice  better  worth  having 
than  that  of  the  young  and  careless ;  but  he  dies  at  the  very  moment  when 
he  is  most  valuable,  when  out  of  the  experience  of  life  he  has  wrought 
the  gold  of  Wisdom,  and  he  passes  away  into  heaven  or  hell,  where,  in 
either  case,  the  wisdom  is  useless.  It  is  earth  that  wants  these  men  grown 
old  in  wisdom,  and  if  all  our  best  and  wisest  and  noblest  are  taken  away 
into  worlds  where  there  is  no  opportunity  to  use  the  wisdom  they  have 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY.  39 

garnered,  into  worlds  where  wisdom  is  useless,  because  every  one  is 
irretrievably  saved  or  damned,  then  the  whole  of  human  life  becomes 
irrational,  and  the  whole  of  human  experience  is  thrown  on  the  rubbish- 
heap  of  nature.  The  more  you  think  on  reasonable  and  logical  lines,  the 
more  inevitable  will  reincarnation  be  seen  to  be. 

II.  Reincarnation  is  necessary  from  the  scientific  standpoint.  In  the 
days  when  Darwin  published  his  theory  of  evolution,  everything  was  made 
to  turn  upon  the  transmission  of  qualities  from  parents  to  offspring,  and 
on  the  struggle  for  existence,  which  secured  the  best  parents  for  this 
transmission.  But  if  parents  do  not  transmit,  then  the  whole  key  to 
progress  as  given  by  Darwin  is  lost;  for  everything  turns  on  that  trans- 
mission. The  reason  he  desired  that  struggle  should  continue  was  that 
he  saw  in  struggle  the  only  hope  of  human  progress ;  only  thus  could  the 
weaker  be  slain  and  the  strong  survive,  to  be  the  parents  of  the  coming 
generations.  When  I  was  studying  the  working  of  the  Law  of  Population, 
I  wrote  to  Darwin  on  the  subject,  and  his  answer  was  that  we  must  not 
soften  the  struggle,  because  if  we  did  the  human  race  would  cease  to 
progress.  Transmission  of  qualities  gained  by  individual  struggle  was  the 
only  method  of  progress.  But  that  is  not  the  view  of  the  scientist  of  to-day; 
he  now  tells  us  that  parents  do  not  transmit  their  mental  and  moral 
qualities  to  their  offspring;  on  the  contrary,  he  says  that  the  higher  the 
intellectual  qualifications,  the  lower  the  reproductive  power.  He  declares 
that  genius  is  sterile.  He  points  out  how  musical  genius  is,  as  it  were, 
foreshadowed  for  several  generations.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  family 
shows  some  musical  ability  until  a  physical  body  is  prepared  with  sensitive 
ear,  sensitive  fingers,  sensitive  nerves,  so  that  the  physical  characteristics 
necessary  for  a  musical  genius  may  be  prepared.  Into  that  body  the  genius 
comes,  shows  his  power,  conquers  the  world  and  dies — and  instead  of  any 
handing  on  of  his  genius,  thus  lifting  the  race,  his  children,  if  he  has  any, 
are  mediocre,  and  ere  long  the  family  disappears.  Where  are  the  families 
that  produced  Beethoven  and  Mozart,  or  other  great  musical  geniuses  of 


40       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

the  past?  And  everywhere  science  repeats  the  same  truth!  There  is  no 
mental  or  moral  heredity,  genius  does  not  descend ;  it  is  the  death-knell  of 
human  progress,  unless  reincarnation  be  true.  So  long  as  we  thought  that 
by  leading  noble  lives  we  could  pass  on  noble  characters  to  those  who  were 
to  come  after  us,  so  long  was  the  magnificent  argument  of  William  King- 
don  Clifford  true  and  cogent,  when  he  bade  every  father  and  mother 
remember  that  in  their  hands  lay  the  future  of  the  race,  and  urged  them 
to  live  truly  and  nobly  and  purely,  in  order  to  pass  on  the  enriched  heritage 
to  those  who  should  have  the  world  when  they  were  dead.  He  had  no 
belief  in  individual  immortality,  and  from  that  standpoint  there  is  no  nobler 
argument  than  that  in  his  admirable  essay  on  the  "The  Ethic  of  Belief." 
But  that  cannot  be  adduced  as  argument  now,  and  hence,  on  this  question 
of  the  how  of  progress,  science  is  dumb.  Physical  heredity  is  clear;  moral 
and  mental  heredity  is  non-existent ;  and  yet  it  is  on  the  mental  and  moral 
growth  of  man  that  the  future  depends.  Is  not  the  continuity  of  con- 
sciousness the  necessary  completion  of  the  continuity  of  protoplasm  ? 

Another  scientific  problem  arises.  How  were  the  social  qualities 
evolved  ?  By  the  struggle  for  existence  ?  But  in  that  struggle  those  who 
are  least  social  will  be  most  successful.  You  can  see  it  around  you;  in 
the  competitive  struggle  of  human  life  to-day  it  is  not  the  most  honorable 
who  is  the  most  successful  man;  it  is  rather  the  man  who  accepts  the 
business  morality  of  the  day  and  does  not  look  into  it  too  closely ;  in  the 
modern  commercial  struggle  not  the  best  men  come  to  the  top,  but  the 
worse— clever,  yes,  but  unscrupulous  also.  In  such  countries  as  America, 
the  keenest  brain  and  the  most  unscrupulous  conscience  carry  the  man  to 
the  top  of  the  tree.  The  man  who  builds  his  fortune  by  the  laying  waste 
of  thousands  of  homes  becomes  the  multi-millionaire  and  is  held  up  as  an 
example.  Gold  gilds  every  crime  which  the  law  does' not  touch,  and  what 
the  law  does  not  touch  the  social  conscience  does  not  condemn.  The  late 
Dr.  Huxley,  in  his  last  lecture,  before  an  Oxford  audience,  put  this  very 
difficulty  in  striking  fashion.     He  pointed  out  that  man,  a  mere  atom,  set 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY.  41 

himself  against  the  universe  in  his  evolution  of  the  social  virtues,  of  that 
which  made  him  man,  and  raised  him  above  the  brute ;  he  showed  that 
man  was  evolving  not  by  trampling  on  the  weak,  but  by  tending,  cherishing, 
and  helping  them;  that  the  human  qualities  are  those  of  compassion  and 
tenderness,  and  the  use  of  strength  to  guard  the  weak  and  the  helpless; 
and  he  summed  up  in  one  phrase,  borrowed  from  a  Theosophical  Master, 
the  profound  truth :  'The  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  is  the  law  for 
the  evolution  of  the  brute,  but  the  law  of  self-sacrifice  is  the  law  of 
evolution  for  the  man."  But  this  cannot  be  true,  unless  we  come  back  to 
reap  the  results  of  the  self-sacrifice  in  greater  power  to  help;  for  the 
man  who  sacrifices  himself  dies,  and  his  qualities  are  lost  to  humanity 
unless  he  returns,  while  his  fate  is  apt  to  make  others  shrink  back.  The 
mother-bird  who,  to  save  her  young,  pretends  to  be  crippled  in  order  to 
draw  away  from  her  nest  the  cruel  sportsman,  is  sometimes  shot, 
leaving  the  young  to  perish  miserably.  How  shall  her  maternal  instinct, 
so  precious  to  the  race,  be  handed  on?  And  so  with  the  death  of  every 
martyr,  and  the  sacrifice  of  every  hero  who  dies  for  humanity;  if  reincar- 
nation be  true,  then  the  man  who  died  comes  back  with  richer,  fuller 
consciousness  than  that  made  the  sacrifice,  for  that  love  and  sacrifice 
have  been  wrought  into  his  nature  during  the  heavenly  life  and  he  comes 
back  the  richer,  the  stronger,  to  help  with  greater  force. 

One  other  point  we  must  note  in  passing,  although  it  bristles  with  points 
that  one  must  leave  unnoticed.  The  children  are  born,  as  a  rule,  during 
the  youth  of  the  parents,  and  not  during  their  old  age,  when  they  have 
garnered  the  fruits  of  experience  and  have  turned  them  into  wisdom. 
The  father  and  the  mother  grow  by  the  parental  and  married  life;  the 
power  of  self-sacrifice  in  them  is  nurtured  by  the  weakness  of  the  children, 
by  their  need  of  help,  and  so  the  noblest  and  most  advanced  show  their 
highest  virtues  in  mature  life,  when  the  time  of  child-bearing  is  over. 
The  child  obviously  can  inherit  only  the  virtues  possessed  by  his  parents 
at  his  birth,  even  if  he  could  inherit  qualities  at  all.     Hence  the  recruiting 


42       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

of  the  population  is  chiefly  from  the  young  and  therefore  the  more 
thoughtless;  when  thought  is  mature  in  age,  the  time  for  child-birth  is 
over.  There  again  comes  in  a  difficulty  which  only  reincarnation  can 
solve.  For  if  reincarnation  be  true,  nothing  is  lost.  That  daily  sacrifice 
of  the  mother  and  father  for  their  children  crystallizes  in  heaven  into  the 
virtue  of  self-sacrifice  for  all  who  need  help,  the  virtue  which  makes  the 
saint,  the  hero,  the  martyr.  Nothing  is  lost,  nothing  is  wasted.  And  how 
peifectly  this  agrees  in  the  higher  world  with  the  scientific  view  of  the 
conservation  of  energy,  the  indestructibility  of  force,  in  the  lower  world. 
The  evolution  of  consciousness — or  better,  its  unfolding,  in  which  it  de- 
mands ever  better  and  better  bodies  for  its  expression  in  matter — gives  to 
science  the  motive  power  in  evolution,  and  shows  the  two  sides  of  human 
nature,  mind  and  body,  developing  side  by  side  in  the  long  climb  upwards 
of  the  man. 

III.  To  my  mind,  the  third  necessity,  the  moral,  is  the  most  potent  argu- 
ment of  all  for  reincarnation,  for  justice  and  love  must  be  dethroned  in 
this  universe  unless  reincarnation  be  true.  There  are  two  other  possibili- 
ties. One  is  special  creation  by  God;  the  other  is  heredity.  The  first  is 
that  in  which  most  Christians  believe.  Now  both  of  these  leave  man 
paralyzed  and  helpless,  in  the  grip  of  a  destiny  he  cannot  influence. 
When  a  child  is  born  into  the  world,  he  is  not  born  with  a  mind  like  a 
blank  sheet  of  paper  on  which  you  may  write  what  you  will.  No  one 
who  knows  children  can  deny  that  a  child  comes  as  a  living  being  with  a 
character,  with  qualities,  characteristics,  powers  and  deficiencies,  and  you 
have  to  deal  with  them  as  they  are.  Our  Musulman  brother  says  that 
when  a  man  is  born,  his  destiny  is  tied  about  his  neck.  And  this  is  largely 
true,  for  a  man  comes  into  the  world  with  his  character  ready-made. 
You  may  to  some  extent  mould  and  modify  it,  but  your  powers  are  very 
limited.  As  Ludwig  Buchner  said:  "Nature  is  stronger  than  Nurture." 
If  special  creation  be  true,  where  is  justice,  to  say  nothing  of  love?  One 
is  born  a  congenital  idiot,  another  a  genius;  one  a  cripple,  another  strong; 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY.  43 

one  grasping  and  greedy,  another  magnanimous  and  generous;  these  dif- 
ferences show  themselves  in  the  nursery,  nay,  even  before  the  babe  can 
walk.  Who  made  the  differences?  God?  That  implies  Injustice  en- 
throned over  the  universe;  it  implies  the  helplessness  and  therefore  hope- 
lessness of  man.  I  have  sometimes  drawn  a  picture  of  what  is  implied  in 
special  creation,  in  each  human  soul  coming  straight  from  the  hands  of 
God.  People  do  not  realise  what  it  implies.  I  know  much  of  London, 
and  much  of  the  darker  side  of  London  life,  for  I  was  a  member  of  the 
London  School-Board  for  the  poorest  district  in  the  East  End,  where  there 
were  ninety-six  thousand  children  in  my  charge.  Also,  outside  the  chil- 
dren, I  worked  much  among  the  poor.  Those  who  know  the  East  End 
know  something  of  the  misery  of  human  life.  As  a  member  of  the 
School-Board,  I  found  that  there  were  some  children  coming  into  our 
hands  so  foul,  that  we  were  obliged  to  remove  them  from  the  schools 
built  for  the  children  of  decent  parents,  however  poor,  children  con- 
genially physically  diseased,  and  mentally  and  morally  criminal.  Whence 
come  such  children  ?     Why  are  they  born  among  us  ? 

Come  with  me  into  the  slums,  where  the  houses  are  rotten  with  age, 
ingrained  with  filth,  untouched  by  sun  or  air.  Come  along  a  narrow,  filthy 
lane,  full  of  rotting  vegetables,  into  a  little  court.  Come  down  the  broken 
stairs  that  lead  into  an  underground  cellar  which  the  sun  can  never  touch; 
heavy  and  foul  and  filthy  is  the  air  which  the  miserable  creatures  who 
herd  there  must  breathe.  In  the  corner  of  the  cellar  a  woman  is  lying  on 
a  heap  of  filthy  rags.  She  has  just  given  birth  to  a  child,  a  man  child. 
Look  at  the  shape  of  its  head  and  features;  see  that  he  has  no  forehead; 
the  brain  slopes  back  from  the  eyebrows  to  the  back  of  the  head,  which 
comes  up  to  an  almost  acute  angle.  That  child  is  a  congenital  criminal; 
he  will  have  strong  passions  and  weak  intelligence ;  he  is  doomed  to  crime 
and  misery  throughout  the  span  of  his  unhappy  life  on  earth.  He  is  a 
poor  wretched  little  mortal  with  a  human  Spirit ;  fresh-made,  they  tell  us, 
from  the  hands  of  God;  the  mother?  a  harlot  of  the  streets;  the  father? 


44      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

perhaps  a  drunken  sailor  from  the  docks;  who  knows?  From  infancy 
this  child  only  hears  foul  language,  curses  and  filthy  terms.  His  baby  lips 
learn  to  stammer  curses  before  he  knows  what  they  mean.  He  is  brought 
up  on  blows  and  kicks,  sent  out  to  steal,  and  sent  supperless  to  bed,  writh- 
ing in  pain,  if  he  does  not  bring  enough  of  the  results  of  theft  to  pay  for 
the  evening  meal.  And  so  from  year  to  year,  knowing  nothing  of  love, 
nothing  of  kindness  and  caresses,  until,  still  a  child,  he  falls  into  the  hands 
of  the  police.  It  is  before  the  days  of  children's  courts,  of  "first  offences," 
and  the  child-thief  is  sent  to  herd  with  elder  criminals  in  the  gaol,  and  to 
come  out  worse  than  he  went  in.  He  knows  the  law  only  as  an  enemy 
not  as  a  helper,  a  teacher.  No  one  teaches  him;  every  man's  hand  is 
against  him ;  now  he  has  the  brand  of  the  gaol  on  him,  though  verily  that 
matters  little  to  him;  back  and  back  he  comes  to  crime  after  crime,  and 
punishment  after  punishment,  bewildered,  confused,  savage,  until  that 
miserable  product  of  modern  civilization,  the  habitual  criminal,  is  known 
in  every  court  to  which  he  is  brought.  At  last  in  some  moment  of  passion, 
perhaps  of  drunkenness,  he  strikes  too  hard  and  kills  one  of  his  com- 
panions; the  law  grips  him  for  the  last  time;  standing  in  the  dock  he 
dumbly  hears  the  evidence  against  him ;  confused,  miserable,  he  is  led  back 
to  the  condemned  cell ;  and  then  from  the  condemned  cell,  in  the  chill  of  the 
winter  morning,  to  the  gallows,  and  from  the  gallows  his  dead  body  is 
thrust  into  the  pit-lime  grave  in  the  prison-yard.  And  then?  What  will 
you  do  with  him?  He  is  obviously  too  foul  for  heaven  nor  would  he  be 
happy  there,  and  yet  you  cannot  send  to  everlasting  hell  a  man  who  never 
had  a  chance.  That  is  the  story  not  of  one,  but  of  many,  in  all  civilised4 
lands.  It  is  not  as  though  that  were  the  best  work  that  comes  from  the 
creative  hands.  Better  can  be  done.  Into  another  home  in  that  same 
London  a  child,  a  man-child,  is  born  with  every  advantage,  amid  pure 
surroundings  and  welcomed  by  tender,  parental  love ;  his  head  is  marked 
for  the  indwelling  of  genius,  with  well-modelled  skull,  with  delicately 
chiselled  features,  that  tell  of  sensitive  emotions  and  high  ideals.     He  is 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  NECESSITY.  45 

watched  over  with  scrupulous  care.  He  is  coaxed  into  virtue  and  caressed 
into  nobility,  as  the  other  was  kicked  into  crime.  He  never  hears  of 
foulness  and  impurity.  His  mother  and  father  guide  and  guard  his  steps. 
He  is  given  the  best  education  which  civilization  can  offer;  he  passes  on 
from  the  public  school  to  the  college,  the  university.  He  is  praised  and 
laden  with  prizes  for  abilities  he  did  not  make;  he  goes  on  from  joy  to 
joy,  from  achievement  to  achievement;  he  is  as  much  favored  of  the  Su- 
preme, as  the  other  was  made  an  outcast  by  Him;  and  he  dies  after  a  life 
of  glory,  as  the  other  after  a  life  of  crime,  amid  a  nation's  mourning,  with 
his  name  written  in  the  roll  of  great  men  illustrating  the  nation's  history. 

What  had  each  done?  He  had  been  born!  Nothing  more!  You  can- 
not believe  in  special  creation  when  you  face  these  difficulties.  To  believe 
in  it  is  to  blaspheme  the  Justice  upon  which  the  hopes  of  humanity  are  set. 
I  say  nothing  of  Love.  I  appeal  only  to  Justice.  I  put  it  in  the  coldest, 
driest  way  of  Justice.  That  man,  flung  from  the  gallows  into  the  so- 
called  Presence  of  God,  standing  at  the  divine  Bar  of  Judgment,  has  the 
right  to  say:  "Why  hast  thou  made  me  thus?"  And  equally  the  genius 
also  may  reasonably  ask:  "Why  hast  thou  made  me  thus?"  Oh!  it  is  no 
use  to  answer  with  the  words  in  Romans :  "Hath  not  the  potter  power 
over  the  clay?"  No,  not  if  the  clay  is  sentient,  not  if  it  is  instinct  with 
life,  able  to  suffer  and  enjoy.  None  has  the  right  to  create  in  order  to 
torture  or  destroy,  to  condemn  to  crime  here  and  to  hell  hereafter.  That 
is  the  necessity  of  reincarnation  from  the  moral  standpoint,  and  it  is 
stronger  than  the  intellectual  necessity,  more  truly  unanswerable.  You 
may  say  that  I  exaggerate,  and  that  I  have  taken  extreme  types.  I  have 
taken  extreme  types,  but  both  types  exist,  and  all  I  have  done  is  to  put 
them  side  by  side,  so  that  the  contrast  may  startle  you  into  thought,  and 
that  you  may  ask  yourself — and  answer — whether  God  can  have  specially 
made  both  the  congenital  criminal  and  the  genius.  If  not  both,  then 
neither. 


46       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

According  to  reincarnation  there  is  no  difficulty;  the  criminal  is  a  young 
not  yet  unfolded  spirit,  a  savage;  the  other  is  a  spirit,  aged  in  experience; 
both  are  the  results  of  their  own  past,  self-created  from  within. 

That  is  the  moral  problem  with  which  I  leave  you  to-day;  for  not  by 
listening  to  a  speaker  can  you  ever  gain  certainty  on  these  great  studies  in 
human  lives.  Face  the  problems,  seek  the  answers ;  no  ready-made 
opinions  of  other  people  will  ever  finally  satisfy  you ;  they  do  not  fit,  any 
more  than  do  ready-made  clothes.  You  have  to  think  for  yourselves,  or 
else  to  go  ignorant  and  foolish  all  your  days.  I  have  only  acted  as  a  kind 
of  signpost,  to  point  out  difficulties  that  demand  solution.  How  perfect 
the  solution  is  that  comes  with  the  wider  thought,  that  I  shall  show  you  this 
day  week.  For  the  moment  let  me  say:  the  lowest  criminal  is  but  a 
younger  brother,  who  will  come  some  day  where  you  and  I  are  standing ; 
the  greatest  Master  or  Rshi  is  but  an  elder  Brother,  who  is  standing  now 
where  you  and  I  shall  stand  in  millennia  to  come.  Reincarnation  is  the 
message  of  the  Gospel  of  Hope,  of  the  certainty  of  ultimate  success.  Re- 
incarnation is  the  method  of  the  climbing  up  the  Ladder  of  Lives  through 
its  human  stage.  You  can  work  with  the  law  when  you  know  it,  but  you 
cannot  escape  it.  Human  likings  have  no  power  over  natural  law,  but 
knowledge  enables  you  to  co-operate  with  law,  and  thus  quicken  your 
evolution.  And  not  only  may  you  quicken  your  own  evolution  but  you 
may  also  help  your  brothers  to  quicken  theirs,  and  so  may  you  climb  to- 
gether with  them  ever  higher  up  that  Ladder  of  Lives. 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  47 


IV. 

REINCARNATION : 

ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS. 

Several  questions  have  reached  me  in  letters,  in  addition  to  the  problems 
I  had  in  mind  when  I  chose  the  title  of  this  Lecture,  and  I  shall  answer 
those  in  addition  to  the  problems  I  had  thought  of. 

One  question  I  will  take  first,  so  as  to  clear  it  out  of  the  way :  whether 
there  is  a  definite  number  of  human  Spirits,  so  that  in  all  reincarnations 
the  same  Spirit  would  return  over  and  over  again,  or  is  there  an  influx 
of  newly-created  Spirits.  I  omitted  altogether,  as  I  said  last  Sunday,  the 
progress  of  the  intelligence  and  the  conscience  through  the  animal  king- 
dom, and  began  at  the  human  stage.  But  up  to  a  certain  point  in  evolution 
there  is  an  influx  from  the  animal  into  the  human  kingdom,  but  that  point 
is  long  since  past ;  including  those  who  are  still  in  the  lower  kingdoms  and 
who  will  not  enter  the  human  kingdom  in  this  cycle,  there  is  a  fixed 
number  who  will,  in  the  course  of  ages,  pass  through  the  school  of  rein- 
carnation. But,  it  is  said,  if  the  number  of  human  Egos  is  thus  fixed, 
what  about  the  increase  of  population?  The  answer  is  a  very  simple  one: 
those  who  are  in  incarnation  at  any  one  time  form  a  very  small  minority 
of  the  Egos  who  are  tied  to  the  wheel  of  births  and  deaths ;  and  just  as  in 
the  city  of  Madras,  with  a  large  practically-fixed  population,  you  may 
have,  on  the  occasion  of  different  lectures,  this  hall  half  empty,  full,  or 
over-crowded  without  changing  the  population,  of  the  city,  so  with  the 


48       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

population  of  the  globe.  It  might  increase  very  much  in  the  number  of 
Egos  present  at  any  given  time,  without  increase  in  the  total  number  of 
Spirits.  Those  who  are  out  of  incarnation  remain  longer  away  from  earth 
as  they  evolve,  as  mankind  progresses,  for  the  higher  types  of  men  rein- 
carnate more  slowly  than  the  lower;  but  a  little  quickening  of  reincarna- 
tion, a  little  shortening  of  the  heaven-period,  would  increase  the  population 
of  the  globe  very  largely,  since  only  a  relatively  small  number  of  Egos 
are  in  incarnation  at  any  particular  time.  One  may,  however,  point  out 
that  there  is  no  reliable  proof  that  the  population  of  the  globe  is  increas- 
ing; look  back,  for  example,  to  the  invasion  of  Greece  by  Xerxes  and 
notice  the  immense  army  that  was  gathered  together  then,  and  you  will 
see  that  though  the  census  was  not  taken  in  those  days,  there  are  proofs 
enough  that  the  world  was  thickly  populated.  Some  countries  now  take 
a  census  fairly  accurately;  but  as  regards  the  population  of  most  it  is 
merely  guess-work,  as  in  China  for  example.  So  far,  then,  as  the  increase 
of  the  number  of  Egos  in  incarnation  is  concerned,  there  is  no  difficulty; 
for,  with  the  enormous  population  on  which  the  globe  can  draw,  the  num- 
ber of  Egos  in  incarnation  might  be  doubled  in  a  few  years  without 
upsetting  the  balance  of  nature. 

Before  I  deal  with  the  questions  which  demand  solution,  I  want  to  say 
a  few  words  with  regard  to  Causation,  without  which  the  answers  will 
scarcely  be  intelligible.  There  is  a  law  in  Nature  which  links  together 
causes  and  effects.  In  its  most  general  form  it  may  be  stated  in  the 
accepted  axiom  of  Science :  Action  and  Re-action  are  equal  and  opposite. 
The  Hindus  and  Buddhists  call  it  simply  Action,  Karma,  for  the  re-action 
is  bound  up  with  the  action.  This  law  means  that  when  the  equilibrium  of 
nature  is  disturbed,  that  equilibrium  tends  to  be  restored;  this  is  a  uni- 
versal truth  in  nature.  If  you  fling  a  ball  against  a  wall,  the  strength  of 
the  rebound  is  in  exact  proportion  to  the  force  of  the  impact.  This  law, 
continually  working,  has  much  to  do  with  the  questions  with  which  I  have 
to  deal,  and  its  existence  must  be  assumed  in  all  my  answers.    I  shall  deal 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  49 

with  it  next  week.  This  is  not  a  world  of  accidents,  of  chances;  its 
administration  is  not  one  of  favoritism,  of  partiality;  it  is  a  world  of 
changeless  law,  which  works  in  every  region  of  nature— not  only  in  the 
physical  world,  but  in  the  mental  and  the  moral  as  well.  Law  in  nature 
is  nothing  but  the  expression  of  the  divine  Nature,  in  which,  as  a  Christian 
Scripture  says,  there  is  no  ''shadow  of  turning."  That  statement  is  literal- 
ly true.  This  far-reaching  law  of  action  and  reaction  lies  underneath 
every  answer  connected  with  reincarnation,  and  an  understanding  of  it  is 
necessary  for  a  perfect  comprehension  of  the  answers  which  I  have  now 
to  give. 

The  first  question  turns  upon  difference  of  capacity,  as  in  a  savage  and 
in  a  genius.  The  difficulty  is  insoluble  from  the  standpoint  of  Science, 
but  readily  soluble  from  that  of  reincarnation.  Each  one  of  us  is  an 
evolving  Intelligence,  growing  from  life  to  life  as  a  seed  grows  up  into  a 
tree  season  after  season.  The  savage  is  nothing  more  than  a  young 
Intelligence,  one  who  has  come  into  incarnation  at  a  later  period  of  time 
than  an  Intelligence  which  has  reached  the  height  of  civilization ;  but  both 
are  divine.  It  is  the  difference  between  the  sapling  and  the  oak,  one  sown 
as  an  acorn  last  year,  and  the  other  the  growth  of  the  same  acorn  when, 
after  centuries,  it  will  have  developed  into  a  gigantic  tree.  Growth,  evolu- 
tion, is  not  confined  to  the  bodies ;  you  find  it  equally  in  the  mind  and 
moral  nature;  and  the  difference  between  these  in  the  savage  and  the 
criminal  compared  with  the  genius  and  the  saint  is  only  a  difference  of 
degree,  due  to  growth — God  is  unfolded  more  in  the  one  than  He  is  in  the 
other,  but  He  lives  in  both.  It  is  a  question  of  time,  not  of  injustice ;  there 
is  a  later  date  for  the  perfection  of  one  than  for  that  of  the  other;  but 
nothing  less  than  perfection  is  the  destiny  of  each,  and  endless  time  in 
which  to  gain  it  stretches  in  front.  He  who  is  the  savage  now  was  resting 
in  the  divine  bosom,  while  he  who  is  now  the  genius  was  battling  in  the 
strife  of  evolution;  now  he  is  nearer  to  his  rest,  and  the  hour  of  struggle 
is  dawning  upon  the  other.     You  acknowledge  the  evolution  in  bodies; 


50       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

why  not  in  minds  and  consciences?  Compare  your  own  body  with  the 
remnant  of  the  Neanderthal  savage,  of  which  we  have  only  the  skull; 
compare  your  own  skull  with  that.  Compare  your  forehead  with  his 
retreating  frontal,  your  jaw  with  his  prognathous  outline.  You  say  in  the 
case  of  the  skull  that  the  differences  are  due  to  the  efflux  of  time,  to  the 
progress  of  evolution ;  that  the  one  is  the  skull  of  a  savage ;  the  other  that 
of  a  civilized  person.  Granted.  Apply  the  same  principle  to  the  mind 
and  conscience  and  you  will  see  why  there  is  difference;  there  is  growth 
everywhere;  there  is  injustice  nowhere.  We  who  are  here  are  not  divine 
favorites,  who  have  come  for  the  first  time  into  the  world  undeserving  of 
the  position  which  we  hold;  and  the  savage  is  not  a  divine  outcast,  only 
fit  for  the  position  into  which  he  is  thrown.  We  began  alike ;  we  shall  end 
alike.  Both  began  in  nescience,  knowing  nothing ;  both  shall  end  in  omnis- 
cience, knowing  everything;  and  all  the  differences  between  us  are  transi- 
tory, the  differences  of  age  and  growth. 

Then  it  is  said :  even  supposing  that  this  does  account  for  these  differ- 
ences in  human  evolution,  is  it  always  the  case  that  the  child  born  of 
parents  of  a  low  type  is  itself  entirely  low?  Is  it  the  case  that  the  highly 
developed  child  will  always  be  born  of  parents  developed  to  a  high  stage? 
Xo,  it  is  not.  There  are  two  reasons  why  you  may  have  from  a  com- 
paratively savage  type  an  Ego,  a  soul  if  you  prefer  the  term,  more  or  less 
developed.  The  average  child  of  the  savage  will  be  of  the  savage  type, 
but  there  are  exceptions.  You  may  remember  a  well-known  Negro, 
Booker  Washington,  a  most  remarkable  Ego,  who  developed  to  a  high 
point  of  intellectual  and  moral  greatness,  who  was  eloquent  and  labored 
for  his  people,  and  tried  to  raise  them  in  the  social  scale.  He  has  often 
been  pointed  to  as  a  proof  that  the  Negro  can  rise  to  a  high  elevation  both 
mentally  and  morally.  He  was  not  an  Ego  suited  to  a  Negro  body;  but 
rather  was  he  one  moved  by  compassion,  who,  though  dowered  with  higher 
faculty,  deliberately  willed  to  enter  a  low  type  of  body,  in  order  to  help  a 
degraded  and  despised  class.     From  time  to  time  a  great  soul,  sacrificing 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  51 

himself,  will  be  born  into  a  degraded  position  in  order  that  he  may  uplift 
the  degraded,  that  he  may  encourage  them  by  his  example,  and  thus  stim- 
ulate them  to  rise  to  a  higher  level.  Some  of  the  greatest  Saints  of  South- 
ern India  were  born  among  the  Pariahs,  and  these  are  reverenced  every- 
where as  men  so  saintly  and  so  spiritual  that  the  proudest  Brahmana  is 
willing  to  recognize  them  as  Saints  and  Devotees,  though  born  in  the 
lowest  class  in  the  southern  communities  of  India.  Such  souls  come,  born 
into  that  degraded  class,  in  order  to  lift  it  and  to  win  for  it  the  chance  of 
evolution,  by  showing  that  even  the  lowest  type  of  body  cannot  in  any 
way  mar  the  grandeur  of  the  God  within.  Such  cases  are,  however, 
exceptions.  So  also  you  will  sometimes  find  in  a  London  slum,  among 
people  of  a  degraded  type,  a  saintly  and  pure  man  or  woman,  or  perhaps 
a  child,  who  is  growing  up  like  an  unstained  flower  from  the  mire  of  slum 
life.  And  sometimes  in  a  noble  and  good  family  you  have  what  is  called 
a  "black  sheep"  born,  a  hopeless  creature  with  whom  the  parents  can  do 
nothing  but  send  him  away  out  of  the  country  to  be  a  cow-boy  or  a  shep- 
herd in  some  far-off  land.  These  abnormal  cases  we  must  recognize. 
They  are  to  be  explained  by  the  law  of  karma,  which  had  made  between 
Egos  in  the  past  a  link  which  brings  them  together  in  the  present.  The 
black  sheep  may  have  in  a  past  life  done  some  deed  of  kindness  which 
linked  him  to  a  nobler  Ego,  and  now  he  comes  that  the  debt  may  be  repaid 
to  him  by  the  advantage  of  the  influence  of  good  surroundings.  To  under- 
stand such  cases  in  detail  the  causes  must  be  looked  up,  and  I  shall  deal 
with  some  of  these  exceptional  cases  next  Sunday. 

Another  question  arises :  What  about  that  new-born  babe  you  spoke 
of  who  died  almost  immediately  after  birth?  How  would  that  useless 
birth  be  explained  on  the  theory  of  reincarnation?  The  explanation  from 
the  standpoint  of  reincarnation  is  that  in  the  past  (and  I  am  speaking  here 
from  facts  which  we  have  looked  back  and  seen)  such  an  Ego  had  become 
indebted  to  the  law  by  causing  the  death  of  some  one,  but  without  malice, 
without  intention,  killing  by  some  passing  carelessness  or  folly.    To  take 


52      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

a  particular  case :  a  man  threw  away  a  match  when  he  had  lighted  a  cigar, 
without  seeing  if  it  were  out,  and  it  fell  upon  a  heap  of  straw,  which 
blazed  up  and  set  fire  to  a  cottage,  and  a  person  was  burned  to  death. 
You  cannot  call  that  a  case  of  wilful  murder,  and  he  could  not  justly  be 
called  a  murderer.  It  was  an  act  of  carelessness,  an  act  not  criminal,  save 
as  all  carelessness  is  criminal.  His  debt  to  the  law  is  but  a  small  one,  and 
it  is  paid  by  the  slight  delay  in  taking  a  new  body  in  reincarnating;  the 
Ego  loses  that  body,  but  at  once  seeks  another  birth,  which  often  in  such 
cases  takes  place  almost  immediately,  with  only  the  necessary  delay  of  a 
few  months.  But  in  such  cases,  for  the  most  part,  it  is  the  karma  of  the 
parents  which  is  the  chief  cause  of  such  a  birth,  and  an  Ego  is  chosen  for 
their  child  who  owes  such  a  debt  as  I  have  mentioned,  in  order  that  their 
heavier  karma  may  be  worked  out.  It  is  the  parents'  karma  which  plays 
the  larger  part  in  the  cases  of  children  who  die  soon  after  birth.  The 
case  of  the  parent — it  is  there  that  there  is  the  real  suffering.  The  child, 
as  I  have  said,  practically  loses  nothing,  as  he  comes  back  in  a  few  months ; 
he  only  suffers  a  brief  delay;  but  the  father  and  mother,  they  suffer  in  the 
loss  of  the  long-hoped-for  and  expected  child.  It  is  their  karma  brought 
into  touch  with  that  of  the  person  who  owes  the  debt  of  a  life.  Both 
destinies  are  worked  out  in  the  death  of  the  child.  Putting  aside  some 
cases,  we  may  give  as  an  example  one  in  which  the  father  and  mother  in 
a  previous  life  had  shown  unkindness  to  a  child  which  had  some  claim 
upon  them,  though  not  born  in  their  own  home;  or  one  in  which,  the 
father  and  mother  being  dead,  the  relative  or  guardian  had  been  cruel  to 
the  child;  that  lack  of  love,  or  active  cruelty,  stood  against  them  in  the 
debit  book  of  nature.  The  debt  is  demanded  in  the  body  of  their  child 
who  is  dear  to  their  hearts,  and  they  pay  that  body  for  the  debt,  and  thus 
learn  greater  tenderness  and  kindness  to  other  children.  I  have  heard  of 
a  woman,  left  childless,  recognizing  that  the  fault  was  her  own,  and  I  have 
heard  her  say :  "I  will  be  a  mother  to  every  child  who  comes  in  my  way, 
and  so  pay  to  them  the  love  I  would  have  lavished  on  my  baby."    There 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  53 

the  lesson  had  done  its  work,  and  the  karmic  debt  was  fully  paid.  Such 
a  woman,  knowing  the  law,  accepting  it  without  bitterness  or  complaint, 
made  her  own  sorrow  a  benediction  to  many  a  helpless  child,  and  they 
reaped  that  love  a  hundredfold.  So  wisely  does  nature,  which  is  God, 
teach  His  children  how  to  grow  in  love  and  tenderness. 

Then  there  is  this  matter  of  progress  in  nations ;  not  now  progress  of  the 
individual,  but  the  rise  of  a  nation  and  the  decay  of  a  nation— how  do 
these  work  in  under  this  theory  of  reincarnation?    The  rise  of  a  nation  is 
brought  about  by  more  and  more  highly  developed  Egos  being  born  into 
that  nation,  thus  lifting  it  up  step  by  step  to  a  higher  level ;  for  they  them- 
selves are  the  nation.     Into  the  comparatively  uncivilized  condition  the 
younger  souls  of  the  race  would  be  born;  and  when  they  come  back 
improved,  they  will  be  fit  for  a  more  civilized  nation ;  the  rise  of  a  nation 
is  due  to  the  influx  of  more  advanced  souls,  which,  born  into  the  better 
bodies  provided  by  a  good  heredity,  lift  the  nation  upwards  and  help  its 
rise  into  civilization.  An  important  lesson,  this,  for  those  who  have  to  deal 
with  the  social  conditions  of  a  people.     A  nation  can  attract  either  nobler 
or  baser  souls  by  the  social  conditions  it  provides.     If  the  conditions  are 
bad,  as  we  have  them  here  in  India,  with  one-sixth  of  the  people  outcaste 
and  untouchable,  inevitably  we  must  draw  into  India  a  very  large  number 
of  young  and  childish  souls,  in  order  that  they  may  here  learn  the  earlier 
lessons  of  evolution.     If  you  educate  these  lower  types  in  right  living,  if 
you  train  them,  lift  them  up,  teach  them  to  be  cleanly,  honorable,  tem- 
perate, then  you  are  making  for  India  better  conditions  for  her  lowest 
people,  and  the  youngest  souls  will  have  to  seek  a  less  civilized  nation, 
while  the  higher  souls  will  be  born  here  because  the  conditions  are  suitable 
for  their  further  evolution.    It  is  so  also  in  England.    There  the  conditions 
are  favorable  for  some,  but  we  have  the  plague-spots  of  the  slums,  which 
offer  suitable  conditions  for  the  incoming  of  savages.     Part  of  our  lowest 
population,  the  congenital  criminal  class,  is  simply  made  up  of  savages, 
anachronisms  coming  into  a  civilized  race.    If  England  cleared  the  plague- 


54       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

spots  away,  there  would  be  no  conditions  into  which  such  souls  could  be 
born.  We  are  concerned  with  England  and  India,  but  it  is  the  same  with 
other  nations  also.  Evil  social  conditions  will  bring  into  a  nation  little 
advanced  souls;  good  social  conditions  will  bring  into  it  the  highly  ad- 
vanced. The  destiny  of  a  nation  is  under  its  own  control.  Neglect  of  its 
poor  brings  the  inevitable  nemesis  of  national  decay.  It  has  been  so  in  the 
past ;  it  is  so  in  the  present.  And  when  a  nation  has  reached  its  highest 
point,  so  that  the  physical  type  has  reached  its  limit,  can  go  no  further,  but 
must  change  in  order  to  advance,  then  comes  the  time  for  its  decay.  We 
find  it  in  Rome,  Chaldsea,  Egypt — history  is  full  of  such  records.  The 
types  of  the  decaying  nation  are  still  useful  for  the  less  developed  souls, 
and  the  less  developed  are  sent  in.  Then  the  type  gradually  deteriorates, 
each  influx  of  low^er  souls  slowly  degrading  the  physical  type,  until  at  last, 
by  slow  steps,  that  nation  has  become  degenerate,  and  gradually  passes 
away  from  the  pages  of  history.  If  you  study  the  books  of  naturalists, 
you  will  find  that  they  tell  you  that  savages  gradually  become  sterile ;  the 
type  is  too  low  for  the  incoming  Egos;  the  human  race  has  outgrown  it; 
and  when  there  are  no  longer  any  souls  so  little  developed  as  to  inhabit 
these  bodies,  the  women  cease  to  bear  children,  the  type  diminishes  and 
gradually  dies  out.  That  is  what  causes  the  stoppage  of  the  influx  from 
the  animal  kingdom.  There  is  now  a  gulf  between  the  lowest  human  and 
the  highest  animal  stage.  The  human  types  have  perished  with  which 
nature  originally  bridged  the  gulf,  and  so  Egos  rising  out  of  the  animal 
kingdom  can  find  no  bodies  low  enough  for  their  use.  They  must  there- 
fore remain  at  rest,  until,  in  another  world,  types  are  born  sufficiently 
simple  and  low  for  their  indwelling.  In  this  way  you  can  trace  the  causes 
of  the  rises  and  falls  of  civilizations.  It  all  turns  on  the  incarnations  of 
Egos.  This  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  some  of  us  oppose  certain  forms  of 
scientific  cruelty.  Cruelty  is  degrading  to  the  human  type,  and,  if  persisted 
in,  will  gradually  cause  physical  degradation,  the  physical  following  the 
moral  downwards  as  well  as  upwards.    Thus  they  will  bring  about  the  ruin 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  55 

of  the  nation.  Vivisection  belongs  morally  to  the  past,  not  to  the  future ; 
it  will  prove  to  be  one  of  the  passing  bells  of  our  civilization,  unless  the 
social  conscience  arises,  and  puts  an  end  to  these  crimes  against  humanity. 
Another  problem  is  that  of  the  evolution  of  social  instincts.  Darwin 
failed  to  explain  them,  though  he  tried,  saying  that  the  children  of  the 
good  and  self-sacrificing  parent  amongst  animals  would  survive.  But  that 
is  surely  not  so.  He  forgot  that  the  good  and  self-sacrificing  parent  as 
a  rule  perishes,  and  that  the  children,  left  by  their  mother,  have  less  chance 
to  survive.  Huxley,  as  I  said  last  week,  saw  that  that  was  an  insoluble 
problem  from  the  standpoint  of  the  struggle  for  existence.  He  pointed 
out  that  all  the  human  qualities  were  a  disadvantage  in  the  struggle  of  life, 
while  the  brutal  were  an  advantage.  Take  the  case  of  a  mother  who 
•sacrifices  herself  for  the  sake  of  a  child;  of  a  doctor  who  sacrifices  his  life 
in  a  desperate  effort  to  face  the  inroads  of  some  terrible  disease ;  of  a  hero, 
who  sacrifices  his  life  for  his  country ;  of  a  martyr,  who  dies  that  the  truth 
may  live — how  do  such  noble  souls  benefit  their  race  beyond  the  inspiration 
of  their  example?  Passing  into  the  other  world,  they  find  that  on  that 
side  the  sacrifice  they  made  on  earth  is  material  for  the  building  of  quality. 
The  act  and  thought  of  self-sacrifice  are  built  up  into  a  permanent  virtue. 
Virtue  has  been  well  defined  by  an  Indian  writer,  Bhagavan  Das,  as  the 
"permanent  mood  of  a  good  emotion."  Take  the  emotion  of  love;  it 
becomes  a  virtue  when  it  is  universal  and  is  shown  to  all,  whether  known 
or  unknown.  The  love  of  a  mother  for  a  child,  the  maternal  emotion, 
becomes  the  virtue  of  love  when  it  is  shown  to  all  children  alike.  This 
emotion,  then,  which  showed  itself  out  in  the  heroic  action  becomes  crys- 
tallized into  a  virtue  in  heaven,  and  the  man  or  woman  is  reborn  with  that 
virtue  as  a  part  of  the  character ;  nothing  is  lost.  The  more  there  are  who 
sacrifice  themselves,  aye,  who  even  perish,  the  richer  is  humanity  for  the 
sacrifice,  for  they  all  return,  greater  and  nobler.  It  is  said  that  "the  blood 
of  the  martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the  church,"  not  simply  because  the  example 
is  inspiring,  but  because  the  martyrs  come  back  to  serve  their  religion  once 


56       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

more,  the  noble  soul  having  become  more  noble  in  the  heavenly  world. 
The  heavenly  life  makes  permanent,  makes  definitely  fixed,  the  emotion 
that  was  fluidic  and  changeable.  The  social  instincts  are  the  more  promi- 
nent in  the  man  who  comes  back  after  sacrifice,  for  he  has  grown  them 
to  a  still  greater  height  during  his  long  stay  in  the  heavenly  world,  and  has 
then  brought  them  back  on  his  rebirth  to  the  service  of  the  race.  This  is 
the  answer  to  Huxley's  question,  an  answer  which  he  was  groping  after 
in  that  last  lecture  when  he  said :  "Perhaps  man  is  a  part  of  the  conscious- 
ness that  made  the  universe."  Man  is  a  part  of  that  consciousness,  and 
being  a  part  of  it,  he  is  eternal.  Unfolding  the  divine  qualities,  he  comes 
back  to  use  them  for  the  helping  of  humanity.  The  saints  and  heroes 
bring  back  with  them  the  harvest  which  they  sowed  on  earth  and  reaped 
in  heaven,  as  bread  for  the  feeding  of  man.  That  is  the  explanation  of  the 
higher  growth  of  the  social  conscience,  of  social  instincts. 

The  criminal  is  explained  by  reincarnation,  as  we  have  seen.  He  is 
only  a  young  Ego  in  the  savage  state — nothing  to  be  very  sorry  about,  but 
something  to  help.  Here  again,  comes  the  application  of  reincarnation  to 
life.  If  you  believe  in  it,  you  will  not  send  your  criminal  to  gaol,  and  let 
him  out  again,  and  then  send  him  back  again  when  he  commits  another 
crime.  You  will  no  more  do  this  than  you  would  send  a  small-pox  patient 
to  the  hospital  for  a  week,  and  then  let  him  out  again,  and  then  send  him 
back  again  for  a  fortnight,  and  the  third  time  for  three  weeks.  No,  you 
send  him  until  he  is  cured.  That  is  the  way  in  which  you  should  deal  with 
the  morally  diseased  as  well  as  with  the  physically.  Train  the  criminal 
and  educate  him  ;  do  not  punish  him  with  harshness,  for  punishment  which 
is  revengeful  injures  still  further  the  Ego  who  has  come  into  our  hands. 
Certainly  do  not  set  him  free,  any  more  than  you  would  set  free  a  dan- 
gerous animal  to  prey  upon  society,  for  he  also  is  dangerous  in  his  criminal 
state.  But  do  not  make  his  life  miserable.  Train  him,  educate  him,  and 
do  not  let  him  go  until  he  has  shown  that  he  has  learnt  the  lesson  of  right 
living.     There  is  much  talk  of  liberty,  but  you  must  learn  that  liberty  is 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  57 

useless,  nay,  dangerous,  unless  with  it  comes  the  sense  of  responsibility, 
unless  self-control  takes  the  place  of  outer  compulsion.  That  which  crimi- 
nals want  is  training  and  discipline,  and  what  they  have  a  right  to  demand 
at  our  hands  is  not  liberty,  but  education,  not  the  license  to  commit  crime 
after  crime,  purging  each  with  the  imprisonment  which  follows  it,  but  the 
discipline  which  will  teach  them  industry,  self-control,  and  right  living. 
When  criminology  has  become  a  science  based  upon  reincarnation,  then, 
and  then  only,  will  habitual  criminals  disappear.  Prisons  will  become 
schools  which  shall  educate,  train,  and  refine,  the  elders  will  begin  to 
realize  their  duties  to  their  youngers,  and  instead  of  giving  them  votes 
will  help  them  to  develop  virtues.  That  is  a  better  way  of  dealing  with 
criminals  than  the  methods  we  employ  in  the  so-called  civilized  nations 
of  our  day. 

Why  are  some  people  born  deformed,  dwarfs  and  cripples?  That  is 
the  result  of  cruelties  inflicted  upon  others,  paid  for  by  deformities  in 
another  birth.  The  Inquisitors,  for  instance,  are  born  again  deformed. 
(Laughter.)  I  don't  think  it  is  a  question  for  laughing  about,  my  friends, 
for  it  is  a  matter  that  goes  all  along  the  line  of  cruelty,  now  as  in  the  past. 
Vivisectors  today  will  be  born  deformed  in  the  future.  All  who  are  cruel 
will  similarly  reap  the  results.  The  cruel  school-master  who  rules  by  fear, 
not  love,  who  terrorizes  the  children  who  ought  to  learn  to  love  him,  who 
abuses  the  power  which  is  put  into  his  hands,  and  feels  not  the  responsi- 
bility of  his  high  office,  and  knows  not  the  divine  law  which  puts  the 
helpless  in  his  hands  to  protect,  not  to  oppress — reincarnation  for  him  is, 
in  truth,  a  message  with  a  menace  in  it ;  although  ultimately  for  him  also 
a  hope,  because  by  his  own  suffering  he  will  learn  to  do  better.  Cruelty  is 
not  taken  as  seriously  as  it  ought  to  be  taken  among  us.  It  is  one  of  the 
worst  crimes,  because  it  is  against  the  law  of  love,  and  when  inflicted  on 
the  helpless  who  are  in  our  grip,  it  is  the  worst  of  all.  Good  intention  is 
sometimes  pleaded  as  an  excuse  for  cruelty.  The  inquisitor  wanted  to 
save  men's  souls,  but  he  ought  to  have  found  out  a  better  way  of  saving 


58       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

them  than  rack  and  fire.  So  with  the  vivisector;  he  wants  to  save  men's 
bodies,  but  he  ought  to  find  a  better  way  of  doing  it  than  the  torture  of 
animals.  So  with  the  school-master;  he  had  far  better  eradicate  faults  by- 
love  and  by  good  example  than  drive  them  under  the  surface  by  the  cane. 
For  every  cruel  act  on  the  part  of  the  strong  is  bad  not  only  for  the 
suffering  it  inflicts,  but  also  for  the  moral  results,  the  cowardice,  the 
servility  and  the  fear  which  it  implants,  as  well  as  for  ensuring  its  own 
perpetuation,  for  the  weak,  treated  cruelly,  becomes  in  his  turn  cruel  when 
he  is  strong. 

These  are  some  of  the  morals  that  grow  out  of  reincarnation.  Those 
who  believe  in  it  dare  not  act  as  the  ignorant  act,  who  have  to  learn  by 
suffering  that  which  they  might  learn  by  reason  if  they  would.  For 
whether  by  reason  or  by  suffering,  all  must  gain  knowledge  of  the  Law. 

Why  do  we  love  and  hate?  Because  of  our  past  relations  with  the 
people  we  now  love  and  hate.  Some  think  that  reincarnation  means  that 
they  will  be  separated  from  those  they  love.  That  is  not  so.  First  of  all, 
in  the  long  heavenly  life — lasting  sometimes  for  thousands  of  years — the 
whole  of  the  time  is  spent  with  the  people  you  loved  upon  earth,  and 
when  you  come  back  you  tend  to  come  back  in  groups,  together  with 
those  you  loved  before.  There  is  nothing  more  striking  in  tracing  a  series 
of  lives,  than  to  see  how  husbands  and  wives,  relations  and  friends,  come 
back  together.  If  for  other  reasons  they  have  been  born  on  opposite 
sides  of  the  world  even,  they  will  be  drawn  together  as  friends  and  lovers, 
if  they  had  love  for  each  other  in  the  past.  Nothing  in  heaven  or  earth 
can  slay  love,  or  break  its  tie.  Where  there  is  love,  a  link  is  formed 
between  the  Egos,  and  it  cannot  be  broken  by  the  icy  hand  of  death,  nay, 
nor  by  re-birth.  Back  we  come,  old  friends  together — old  enemies  to- 
gether too.  Have  you  never  felt  when  you  met  a  person  for  the  first 
time  as  if  you  knew  him?  Two  or  three  hours  of  talk  between  such 
people,  and  they  will  be  more  at  home  with  each  other  than  children  of  the 
same  family.     And  some  people  you  shrink  back  from  at  sight.     You 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  59 

should  follow  such  a  feeling— it  is  the  warning  of  the  Ego  against  an 
ancient  enemy.  It  is  wiser  to  keep  away  from  a  person  who  arouses  such 
a  feeling,  and  then,  deliberately,  send  to  him  or  her  thoughts  of  love  and 
goodwill,  paying  them  back  in  benediction  and  goodwill  for  the  ancient 
wrong.  Then,  after  some  years,  you  may  meet  again  the  same  person,  an 
enemy  no  more,  but  changed  into  a  neutral  or  a  friend.  And  when  you 
meet  a  person  for  the  first  time,  and  your  heart  springs  out  with  strong 
affection,  then  realize  that  Spirit  is  calling  to  Spirit  across  the  veil  of 
flesh.  Bodies  may  differ  to  any  extent,  for  reincarnation  takes  us  into 
nation  after  nation,  but  the  Spirits,  knowing  each  other,  will  spring  for- 
ward at  the  meeting  of  the  bodies,  and  the  hands  will  clasp  in  instinctive 
affection.  That  is  the  answer  to  these  strange  impulses  of  sudden  attrac- 
tion, as  ancient  wrong  is  the  explanation  of  the  sudden  repulsions.  When 
you  feel  the  attraction,  you  have  the  foundation  for  the  firmest  friend- 
ships earth  can  know.  That  deep,  instinctive  call  from  the  invisible  is 
surer  than  any  reason  or  argument  or  knowledge,  and  when  it  is  deep  and 
strong,  it  is  absolutely  reliable.  But  be  sure  that  it  comes  from  within 
and  not  from  without,  as  it  sometimes  does  in  what  is  called  "love  at  first 
sight."  That  may  indeed  be  the  call  of  Ego  to  Ego,  but  may  also  be  only 
the  call  of  body  to  body,  the  attraction  of  the  senses  between  man  and 
maid,  and  that  merely  physical  love  will  break  and  vanish  with  custom, 
and  the  marriage  based  upon  it  has  little  chance  of  permanent  happiness. 
But  the  deep  recognition :  "This  is  my  mate" — as  when  Savitri  first  saw 
Satyavan,  the  man  she  determined  to  marry,  and  refused  all  others,  even 
holding  steadfastly  to  her  choice  against  the  prophecy  that  he  had  only 
one  year  of  life  before  him — such  a  definite  will  from  within  is  worthy  to 
be  trusted,  and  from  that  grow  the  best  unions,  whether  of  wedded  love 
or  friendship,  that  earth  is  able  to  produce.  Reincarnation  gives  a  per- 
manency to  friendship  that  nothing  else  can  give ;  you  feel  that  you  will 
never  lose  your  friend.  Sometimes  it  helps  you  very  much  also,  when  a 
person  whom  you  dearly  love  does  not  love  you,  or  when  you  love  much 


60      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

more  than  the  other,  so  that  the  response  is  insufficient  to  give  happiness. 
The  one  who  knows  reincarnation  says :  "My  strong  love  has  its  root  in 
the  past.  If  it  is  not  answered  now,  it  is  due  to  some  injury  that  I  have 
done  to  my  friend  in  the  past.  Let  me  pour  out  more  love,  that  I  may 
pay  my  debt  of  wrong  and  then  draw  us  together."  Reincarnation  makes 
us  strong,  able  to  bear  and  to  endure ;  nothing  in  life  is  really  unbearable, 
however  sorrowful,  when  you  know  the  origin  and  see  the  end.  For 
those  who  are  eternal,  where  is  sorrow?  where  is  pain? 

One  question  remains :  "Why  do  we  not  remember  ?"  That  is  the 
question  which  is  always,  and  naturally,  asked.  "If  I  have  been  here  a 
hundred  times  before,  why  should  I  not  remember?"  Let  me  try  to 
answer  this  question,  even  though  I  cannot  hope  to  do  more  than  make  out 
a  case  that  will  urge  you  to  enquiry  and  study.  In  your  present  lives  you 
forget  much  more  than  you  remember.  Go  back  to  your  childhood — how 
much  of  it  do  you  remember  ?  Just  a  few  things  stand  out — the  first  pony 
that  was  given  to  you,  or,  if  you  were  a  studious  child,  the  first  book ;  the 
first  time  you  went  in  a  boat,  or  on  a  railway  journey.  These  you  remem- 
ber, but  all  those  many,  many  days  which  made  your  childhood  are  lost. 
No,  they  are  not.  They  are  all  bringable  back  to  the  memory.  If  any  one 
of  you  were  taken  and  thrown  into  the  hypnotic  trance,  the  memory  of 
your  childhood  would  come  back,  its  events  would  arise  before  you.  You 
do  not  really  forget.  The  many  past  things  fall  into  the  background,  and 
are  hidden  by  the  more  vivid  memories  of  later  events,  but  in  the  trance 
state  the  whole  comes  back.  Nothing  is  lost.  The  man  will  talk  in  the 
language  which  he  knew  as  a  little  child,  but  which  he  has  since  forgotten, 
even  though  the  hypnotizer  does  not  know  it;  so  thought-transference, 
which  people  disbelieved  a  short  time  ago,  but  which  is  now  used  to 
explain  every  abnormal  phenomenon,  is  out  of  court.  I  ask  you  in  the 
trance  where  you  were  born,  and  then  trace  your  early  life,  and  you  will 
speak  the  language  you  heard  in  infancy.    You  talk  it  in  the  trance,  but 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  61 

forget  it  when  you  are  awake.  I  ask  you  some  small  incident,  perhaps 
about  a  lost  toy,  and  you  remember  it,  and  say  where  it  was  put.  This 
has  been  done  over  and  over  and  over  again,  especially  in  Paris,  where 
they  have  tried  it  in  small  things — the  menu  on  a  dinner  table  of  three 
weeks  back,  not  remembered  by  the  person  when  he  was  awake;  hyp- 
notized, he  was  able  to  give  the  whole  of  it  without  a  flaw.  The  same 
thing  sometimes  happens  in  a  fever.  Once  a  man  had  lost  a  pin  of  some 
value  and  in  a  fever,  in  his  delirium,  he  remembered  where  it  was.  This 
is  all  very  interesting  when  you  come  to  deal  with  the  problem  of  memory. 
Why  do  you  remember  when  your  brain  is  thus  thrown  out  of  order? — 
for  that  is  what  happens  both  in  delirium  and  in  trance.  Why  does  the 
brain  thrown  out  of  gear  remember  what  in  its  normal  state  it  forgets? 
Because  the  memory  of  a  past  event  has  been  pushed  into  the  background 
by  a  succeeding  one,  and  it  has  sunk  just  below  the  threshold  of  con- 
sciousness ;  the  strength  of  vibration  in  the  nerve-cells  of  the  brain,  which 
is  the  physical  expression  of  that  which  you  call  memory,  has  decreased, 
and  when  they  are  no  longer  active  you  forget.  And  they  work  in  inter- 
linked groups.  Sometimes  a  new  impact,  as  that  of  a  scent,  reinforces 
the  dormant  memory  of  a  scent,  and  thus  calls  back  an  event  in  which  that 
scent  was  prominent ;  you  apply  a  stimulus  to  one  of  your  brain-cells,  and 
the  whole  of  the  group  of  brain-cells  interlinked  with  it  answers.  These 
facts  are  my  basis  for  the  answer  to  the  problem :  "Why  do  I  not  remem- 
ber my  past  births?"  When  I  take  you  back  to  your  childhood  by  mes- 
merizing you,  the  proof  that  you  learnt  the  language  you  speak  is  in  the 
fact  of  your  speaking,  as  being  able  to  read  shows  that  you  learned  read- 
ing. The  fact  that  you  forget  learning  to  read  would  be  no  proof  of  your 
not  having  learned,  if  you  can  read.  Take  my  own  case,  for  example. 
I  do  not  remember  being  taught  to  read.  I  do  not  remember  any  time 
when  I  could  not  read.  But  the  fact  that  I  read  shows  that  I  must  have 
been  taught.  And  the  fact  that  you  have  a  character  and  a  conscience 
shows  that  you  have  a  past  where  these  were  formed  and  built  up.     But 


62      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

we  can  go  further.  You  are  not  living  now  in  the  brain,  nor  in  the 
desire-nature,  nor  in  the  mind,  in  which  you  lived  in  the  past.  Your  Ego 
is  the  same,  but  the  garments  of  the  Ego  are  different,  and  the  body  you 
wear  remembers  only  that  which  the  body  has  experienced,  and  that 
comprises  only  the  physical,  emotional  and  mental  events  and  expressions 
of  the  present  life.  The  brain  is  new.  How  should  the  brain  that  was 
not  in  the  past  life  remember  the  events  of  the  past  life?  Your  desire- 
body  is  new ;  how  should  it  remember  the  desires  felt  and  satisfied  in  its 
predecessor  ?  Your  mind  is  new ;  how  should  it  remember  past  thoughts  ? 
It  is  only  you,  you  yourself,  the  living  immortal  Ego,  who  can  remember, 
because  he  has  passed  through  all  the  experiences,  and  he  forgets  nothing. 
But  he  does  not  engrave  his  own  eternal  memory  on  the  new  garments 
he  endues  for  the  gathering  of  fresh  experiences.  You  can  gain  your 
memory  if  you  choose  to  take  the  methods  to  gain  it,  and  those  are  simple 
enough.  Your  energy  is  ever  running  outwards  to  the  outer  world ;  your 
interests,  thoughts  and  pleasures  are  there,  and  so  all  the  inborn  energy 
of  the  lasting  and  permanent  you,  the  true  "I,"  is  always  running  out- 
wards through  the  mind,  the  desire-nature  and  the  physical  body.  It  ever 
seeks  the  outer.  You  must  reverse  its  direction.  You  must  turn  it  in- 
wards, if  you  would  remember ;  inwards  to  the  Spirit,  manifested  as  Ego, 
in  which  alone  resides  the  memory  of  the  past.  Only  when  you  realize 
the  Ego  as  yourself  and  reach  his  memory,  can  you  remember.  The  Ego 
alone  has  been  through  all  these  events  of  past  lives,  and  when  any  par- 
ticular life  is  over  and  you  have  in  heaven  worked  up  its  experiences  into 
faculty,  then  the  memory  of  those  experiences  passes  on  into  the  spiritual 
treasure-house  of  the  Ego,  and  only  the  results,  the  faculties,  are  im- 
pressed upon  the  new  mind  and  body.  It  is  rather  like  a  merchant  who, 
in  his  book-keeping,  carries  on  to  the  new  year  only  the  balance  in  his 
ledger ;  he  does  not  enter  in  the  new  ledger  all  the  items  belonging  to  the 
last  year;  he  writes  down  only  the  balance  which  is  the  result  of  the 
year's  trading,  with  which  he  begins  the  new.     That  is  exactly  what  the 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  63 

Spirit  does  in  the  higher  world.  He  balances  up  and  closes  the  ledger  of 
the  past,  but  it  is  not  lost,  it  remains  in  his  memory.  He  carries  his 
balance  only  into  the  new  ledger,  and  calls  it  intellect  and  conscience. 
The  tendency  to  think  murder  wrong — that  is  part  of  the  balance,  and  has 
grown  out  of  the  past  trading.  It  is  only  a  tendency  to  think  so,  remem- 
ber— that  is  all  which  is  handed  on  to  the  new  mind  and  brain — tendencies 
to  think  along  certain  lines,  and  it  is  these  tendencies  which  respond  to 
education,  and  make  it  possible.  That  is  the  fundamental  reason  why 
we — i.  e.,  the  brain-consciousnesses — do  not  remember.  And  is  it  not  well 
that  it  should  be  so  ?  I  said  that  you  could  recover  the  memory  by  inward- 
turned  meditation,  by  living  in  the  higher  instead  of  in  the  lower,  by  living 
in  the  Spirit  instead  of  in  the  mind,  the  desire-nature  or  the  body.  Live 
the  spiritual  life,  in  the  Spirit  who  realizes  the  Unity,  who  realizes  his  own 
Divinity,  who  knows  himself,  and  then  your  past  will  be  spread  out 
before  you,  and  you  can  recover  the  whole  of  it  at  will. 

Several  of  us  know  this  to  be  true,  because  we  have  done  it,  and  to 
each  who  has  done  it  this  is  the  best  of  all  proofs.  But  it  is  no  proof  to 
another.  I  am  telling  you  what  I  know  to  be  true,  and  I  know  also  a 
very  fair  number  of  people  who  can  remember,  who  can  compare  notes, 
and  verify  facts,  and  recognize  one  another  through  the  millennia  of  the 
past.  But  I  asked:  Is  it  not  well  you  should  not  remember?  You  may 
recall  what  Goethe  said  when  he  was  approaching  his  death-hour — he 
believed  of  course  in  reincarnation,  as  every  philosopher  must :  "What  a 
comfort  it  is  to  think  that  I  shall  come  back  fresh-bathed"  (his  German 
expression),  the  past  washed  away.  It  is  truly  well,  and  you  will  see  in  a 
moment  why.  Suppose  there  were  a  young  man  and  woman  who  had  just 
married,  and  they  knew  that  death  would  come  to  one  of  them  in  a  year. 
The  whole  of  that  year  together  would  be  shadowed  by  approaching  death. 
Or  if  one  of  you  has  done  a  wrong  thing,  perhaps  when  you  were  a  boy, 
do  you  not  still  look  back  with  remorse  or  pain  on  that  wrong?  How 
many  a  criminal,  to  take  a  graver  case,  could  go   forward  if  only  he 


64       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

could  forget,  but  the  memory  of  his  crime  is  a  fetter  on  him,  preventing 
his  recovery  and  progress.  How  much  happier  many  of  you  would  be  if 
you  could  forget  much  of  the  past  of  this  one  life.  Some  things  are  better 
forgotten.  The  wrong  things  others  have  done  to  you,  the  injuries  they 
have  inflicted  upon  you,  for  example.  You  remember  how  it  was  said  of 
Shri  Ramachandra  that  twenty  wrongs  done  to  him  in  the  day  He  had 
forgotten  by  the  evening,  while  one  kindness  He  never  forgot.  There  is 
the  perfect  man.  The  memory  of  all  the  kindnesses  remained  and  shone 
out  as  gratitude;  the  memory  of  all  the  wrongs  faded  away.  Not  until 
you  are  strong  enough  to  bear  the  memory  of  the  present  life  without  re- 
gret, remorse,  or  anxiety,  and  above  all,  without  resentment  or 
sense  of  grievance,  should  you  desire  to  add  to  that  burden  of 
one  life,  the  burden  of  a  long  millennial  past.  When  you  are  strong 
enough  to  look  at  your  present  life  merely  as  a  lesson  which  you  are  learn- 
ing, without  complaint,  remorse,  discontent  or  anger,  then  will  you  be 
beginning  to  be  strong  enough  to  bear  the  memories  of  the  past;  but  until 
you  can  bear  the  past  of  one  life  serenely,  do  not  crave  to  know  the  past 
of  hundreds.  You  have  a  new  body  ,a  new  desire-nature,  and  a  new  mind, 
and  the  fact  that  the  Ego  only  hands  on  to  the  new  instruments  as  much 
as  is  useful  for  the  new  life  is  a  wise  and  merciful  arrangement;  when 
you  reach  that  memory  of  the  Ego,  then  you,  being  one  with  him  con- 
sciously, will  be  strong  enough  to  bear  the  added  burden,  and  you  will 
remember  in  your  new  brain. 

That  is  the  last  answer  to  life's  problems  that  I  will  put  before  you 
to-day.  Let  me  say,  in  concluding,  that  every  answer  which  I  have  given 
ought  to  be  analyzed  and  judged  by  yourselves,  and  not  accepted  unless 
it  justifies  itself  to  you.  By  repeating  simply  instead  of  thinking,  no  real 
progress  is  made.  Try  to  think  and  to  understand,  and  then  you  will 
grow.  Do  not  build  up  a  new  set  of  opinions  which  are  only  the  re- 
flexion of  somebody  else's  thought.  Imitation  is,  in  this  case,  by  no 
means   the   sincerest   flattery.     Earnest   individual   thought    is   the   best 


REINCARNATION:  ITS  ANSWERS  TO  LIFE'S  PROBLEMS.  65 

thanks  that  you  can  give  to  a  speaker  who  is  appealing  to  your  reason. 
Throw  aside  the  bias  and  the  prejudice  that  makes  you  reject  a  thought 
because  it  is  new;  or,  with  some  of  you,  make  you  accept  it  because  it  is 
old.  The  aim  of  these  lectures  is  to  win  you  from  prejudice  to  study,  to 
persuade  you  to  think  for  yourselves.  To  think  imperfectly  is  better  than 
merely  to  repeat  a  right  thought  coming  from  somebody  else.  If  you 
would  learn  wisdom,  then  you  must  think,  strenuously,  patiently,  per- 
severingly;  by  repeating  what  you  have  heard  from  another,  you  will 
acquire  only  the  faculty  of  the  parrot,  and  not  that  of  the  man. 


66  POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 


V. 
THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION. 

You  will  remember  that,  last  Sunday,  in  speaking  of  reincarnation 
and  the  answers  that  it  can  give  to  many  questions,  I  stated  that  there 
was  one  fact  that  ought  to  be  understood  before  the  answers  would  seem 
to  be  thoroughly  satisfactory,  and  I  called  this  fact  the  Law  of  Causa- 
tion. I  chose  that  term  because  it  is  one  which  is  familiar  to  those  who 
have  read  anything  of  western  literature  and  science,  though  it  is  not 
quite  the  best  word  to  describe  the  fact  in  nature  which  it  is  intended 
to  cover.  Emerson  saw  the  natural  fact  better  when  he  said  that  with 
every  action  its  results  were  bound  up;  there  was  no  real  difference, 
according  to  him,  no  dividing  line,  between  that  part  of  an  activity  which 
is  above  the  surface,  t\e  action  and  that  part  which  is  below  the  surface, 
which  we  often  speak  of  afterwards,  as  the  consequence.  The  two 
things,  the  visible  and  the  invisible,  are  really  parts  of  one  thing,  and 
the  Lord  Buddha  put  it  in  a  very  striking  way  when  He  said  that  you 
could  no  more  separate  ti*e  action  from  its  results  than  the  sound  of 
the  drum  from  the  drum.  When  the  drum  is  beaten  there  is  sound; 
when  an  action  is  committed  there  is  an  invisible  something  before, 
that  is  spoken  of  as  the  cause,  the  motive,  for  the  action,  and  there  is 
an  invisible  something  afterwards,  which  is  spoken  of  as  the  conse- 
quence, the  result.     But  looked  at  philosophically  these  are  part  of  the 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  67 

one  activity.  Because  of  that  the  philosophically-minded  Hindu  has 
always  used  the  one  word  Karma,  which  means  simply  Action,  to  de- 
scribe this  definite  relation,  or  rather  identity,  between  the  invisible  and 
the  visible  parts  of  every  activity.  Now  it  is  that  which  we  are  going 
to  consider  this  afternoon. 

There  is  no  question  as  to  the  truth  of  this  fact,  called  karma,  so  long 
as  you  remain  entirely  in  the  physical  world.  No  one  who  has  studied 
anything  of  science  will  deny  the  existence  of  the  laws  of  nature.  Those 
laws  are  not  commands.  They  do  not  tell  you:  "Do  this,"  or:  "Do 
that."  They  are  simply  statements  of  certain  successions,  or  sequences, 
that  have  been  observed  to  happen,  so  that  when  one  thing  has  happened, 
another  definite  thing  invariably  follows  it.  Such  an  observed  invariable 
sequence  is  called  a  "Law  of  Nature,"  and  these  laws  of  nature  for 
science,  are  based  on  innumerable  observations  and  experiments.  A  law 
of  nature,  then,  is  nothing  more  than  a  succession  of  happenings.  This 
is  fundamental  for  the  understanding  of  what  is  called  karma,  and  must 
be  clearly  understood.  As  I  just  said  there  is  no  such  thing  in  nature 
as  "law"  in  the  sense  of  "command."  The  laws  of  Kings,  of  Parlia- 
ments, of  Legislative  Chambers,  are  commands  to  do  or  to  abstain  from 
doing,  and  the  penalty  connected  with  their  breach  is  arbitrary;  there 
is  no  connection  between  the  offence  forbidden  by  the  statute  and  the 
penalty  imposed  on  the  breach;  this  is  attached  by  the  will  of  the  law- 
giver, and  there  is  no  casual  connection  between  the  two.  But  with 
regard  to  a  law  of  nature  it  is  different;  it  is  not  a  command;  there  is 
only  a  definite  sequence,  and  the  penalty  following  on  its  disregard  is 
inevitable  and  natural.  A  natural  law  cannot  be  broken ;  it  can  only  be 
disregarded,  and  the  results  of  the  disregard  are  inevitable.  Certain 
conditions  are  stated,  and  wherever  these  are  present,  some  other  definite 
condition  will  and  must  follow.  That  is  all  that  we  mean  by  a  law 
of  nature.  If  you  sow  rice,  you  will  reap  rice,  not  barley;  but  nature 
does  not  say:    "Sow  rice,"  or:   "Sow  barley."     She  leaves  you  perfectly 


68       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

free  to  sow  whichever  you  please,  and  the  law  of  nature  is  seen  in  the 
definite  relation  between  the  sowing  and  the  harvest.  If  you  want  rice, 
it  is  of  no  use  to  sow  barley  or  thistles.     That  is  karma. 

You  have  it  again,  put  in  another  form,  in  the  Christian  Scriptures, 
clearly  and  unmistakably  stated:  "Be  not  deceived;  God  is  not  mocked; 
whatsoever  a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap.''  That  is  karma; 
it  is  stated  precisely,  karma,  neither  more  nor  less.  And  when  you  come 
to  think  over  these  laws  of  nature  on  the  physical  plane,  if  you  ap- 
preciate what  is  meant  by  them,  and  understand  their  bearing,  you  will 
have  no  difficulty  in  extending  the  idea  of  law  to  the  mental  and  moral 
worlds.  To  an  ascertained  sequence  acting  in  the  mental  and  moral 
worlds,  this  word  is  constantly  applied  in  Hindu,  Buddhist  and  Theo- 
sophical  books.  All  the  worlds  are  connected,  and  in  all,  Law,  which 
is  karma,  holds  sway.  It  is  an  invariable  sequence  and  has  nothing  of 
the  nature  of  a  command;  it  leaves  you  free  to  choose,  but  points  out 
that  such  and  such  will  inevitably  happen  as  the  consequent  of  your 
choice,  and  whatever  the  condition  you  choose,  you  must  accept  with 
it  the  inevitable  consequent  condition.  The  statement  of  this  on  the 
physical  world  by  a  scientific  man  might  make  an  ignorant  person  think 
that  he  is  not  a  free  agent,  and  can  do  nothing.  If  you  have  the  bare 
statement  of  a  natural  law,  it  would  be  quite  easy  for  an  ignorant  per- 
son to  think:  "Such  and  such  a  condition  is  laid  down  by  nature,  and 
therefore  I  cannot  do  so  and  so."  Take  what  is  called  the  law  of  gravi- 
tation— a  special  case  of  the  general  law  of  Attraction — that  bodies  tend 
to  move  towards  the  centre  of  the  earth.  An  ignorant  person  might 
think  that  everything  had  to  move  in  that  way,  and,  sitting  down  at  the 
foot  of  a  staircase,  might  declare:  "The  law  of  gravitation  forbids 
me  to  move  away  from  the  earth;  therefore  I  cannot  walk  upstairs." 
How  is  it  possible  for  you  to  move  upwards?  By  putting  against  the 
force  of  nature  that  draws  you  toward  the  centre  another  force  of 
nature  by  which  you  may  raise  yourself  away  from  it — i.  e.,  muscular 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  69 

force.  That  is  another  fundamental  idea  which  you  must  get  hold  of. 
Although  there  is  the  tendency  to  go  towards  the  earth,  you  can  yet 
rise  from  it  by  the  utilization  of  another  force  equally  natural.  You 
do  not  break  the  law  of  gravitation.  You  feel  its  working  in  the  ex- 
ertion by  which  you  lift  yourself  against  gravity;  that  exertion  vindicates 
the  truth  of  the  scientific  proposition  that  you  cannot  break  a  law  of 
nature.  Coming  downstairs,  effort  is  not  necessary;  for  in  that  the 
law  helps  you.  Thus,  as  you  go  on  studying,  you  find  that  a  statement 
which  at  first  seems  paradoxical  is  true;  because  the  laws  are  inviolable, 
therefore  a  man  can  move  freely  among  them;  but  on  one  condition, 
and  on  one  condition  only — that  he  knows  and  understands  them;  other- 
wise he  is  a  slave.  Exactly  in  proportion  to  your  knowledge  are  you  free 
in  the  midst  of  these  forces  of  nature.  You  can  trust  their  working, 
you  can  calculate  upon  them.  They  work  changelessly ;  therefore  you 
can  reckon  upon  them,  can  neutralize  those  which  hinder  you  and  utilize 
those  which  help  you.  Just  because  nature  is  full  of  forces  acting  in 
every  possible  way  under  changeless  laws,  therefore  a  man  by  knowl- 
edge can  become  the  master  of  nature.  That  is  another  point  clearly 
to  realize  on  the  physical  plane. 

You  remember  the  famous  statement  of  a  great  scientist,  that  I  have 
often  quoted  and  that  is  profoundly  true:  "Nature  is  conquered  by 
obedience".  You  cannot  fight  against  nature;  she  is  too  strong  for 
man's  puny  powers;  but  you  can  make  her  do  exactly  what  you  will, 
if  you  understand  and  know  the  laws  within  which  her  forces  work.  If 
you  understand,  you  will  be  her  master,  and  the  only  way  in  which 
science  has  become  possible,  the  great  truth  which  has  made  the  mag- 
nificent and  useful  triumphs  of  science  during  the  last  century  is  the  fact 
that  the  world  is  a  world  of  law.  If  it  were  not.  its  workings  would  be 
beyond  calculation.  We  could  never  move  with  certainty.  Accidents 
would  be  constantly  happening,  and  we  should  never  know  what  to  ex- 
pect.    But  because  the  laws  do  not  change,  they  are  calculable ;  because 


70      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

they  do  not  change,  they  are  comprehensible;  therefore  in  a  world  of 
changeless  law  man,  by  reason,  becomes  a  free  agent,  can  compel  the 
laws  to  his  service,  and  make  them  do  for  him  what  he  cannot  do 
unassisted  by  himself.  There  lies  the  secret  of  the  famous  phrase  of 
Emerson:  "Hitch  your  wagon  on  to  a  star."  The  force  symbolized 
by  the  star  will  move  our  wagon,  no  matter  what  may  be  its  weight. 
Man  is  not  commanded  by  nature,  is  not  her  slave;  he  is  in  the  midst  of 
discoverable  and  calculable  laws  and  forces,  which  by  knowing  he  can  rule 
and  use.  In  the  midst  of  this  net-work  of  changelessness  he  is  able  to 
bring  about  the  thing  he  desires,  and  to  be  sure  that  nature  will  never 
fail  him,  nor  swerve  from  her  changeless  road.  When  he  fails,  it  is 
because  he  has  not  rightly  made  his  appeal,  because  his  knowledge  is 
imperfect,  and  that  imperfection  has  betrayed  him. 

Is  it  possible  to  transfer  that  certainty  of  law,  that  changeless  in- 
violable security,  to  the  realms  of  mind  and  morals?  Ancient  religions 
say  so;  some  modern  religions  say  the  same  thing,  but  not  quite  so  fully 
nor  so  clearly.  If  this  be  possible  then  is  man  indeed  the  Master  of  his 
Destiny,  for  he  can  then  work  in  those  worlds  which  shape  the  future, 
and  make  himself  what  he  wills  to  be.  But  for  this,  as  in  physical  science, 
detailed  study  is  necessary,  and  the"  knowledge  of  the  methods  whereby 
laws  are  applied  to  bring  about  the  desired  results. 

There  are  three  subsidiary  laws  under  the  general  law  of  action: 
(1)  That  thought  is  the  power  that  builds  up  character;  as  you  think 
you  will  be.  (2)  That  the  force  which  we  call  desire  or  will  (two  forms 
of  the  same  force)  draws  together  you  and  the  thing  you  desire,  and 
that  you  are  bound  to  go  to  the  place  where  that  thing  can  be  found,  and 
that  desire  can  be  gratified.  (3)  That  the  effect  of  your  conduct  upon 
others,  causing  to  them  happiness  or  misery,  brings  you  happiness  or 
misery  in  return. 

Last  week  I  reminded  you  of  the  scientific  fact  that  Action  and  Re- 
action are  equal  and  opposite.     If  a  man  understands  these  three  laws, 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  71 

and  knows  how  to  apply  them,  he  becomes  master  of  his  own  future, 
maker  of  his  own  destiny.  Instead  of  being  helpless,  as  he  would  be 
under  the  hypothesis  of  special  creation,  or  under  the  hypothesis  of 
mental  and  moral  heredity  from  his  ancestors,  he  becomes  no  longer 
helpless,  but  the  master  of  himself  and  his  future,  able  to  shape  it  in 
exact  proportion  •  to  his  knowledge  and  his  will.  I  want  now  to  show 
you  how  these  laws  work  out,  for  without  the  knowledge  of  these  laws 
and  of  the  method  of  their  application,  the  more  general  statement,  how- 
ever rational,  would  hardly  be  as  satisfactory  as  I  hope  to  make  it. 

(1)  Thought  Buhjds  Character: — You  may  test  that  statement 
either  by  the  authority  of  the  past,  which  speaks  very  strongly  upon  this  in 
the  world's  great  Scriptures ;  or  by  your  own  experience — and  this  is,  in 
many  ways,  better,  because  your  own  experience  remains  with  you  as 
yours,  and  cannot  be  shaken.  The  authority  on  this  is  very  clear.  In 
the  Chhando gyopanishat  it  is  said  in  so  many  words :  "Man  is  created 
by  thought;  what  a  man  thinks  upon,  that  he  becomes."  The  "wise 
King  of  Israel"  said  just  the  same ;  "As  a  man  thinks  so  he  is."  A  sim- 
ilar idea  is  found  in  the  Bhagavad  Gita:  "A  man  consists  of  his  faith; 
as  his  faith  is,  so  is  he."  Professor  Bain,  five  thousand  years  later, 
you  may  remember,  also  gave  conduct  as  the  test  of  belief.  I  might  quote 
many  other  sentences,  and  show  you  how  entirely  on  this  point  the 
Scriptures  of  the  world  are  in  unison.  We  find  it  everywhere.  Now  if 
that  is  really  a  law  of  nature  it  is  subject  to,  is  capable  of,  verification. 
Every  statement  of  a  law  in  nature — if  the  statement  be  true — can  be 
verified  by  individual  experiments;  and  so  with  this.  If  you  want  to 
know  with  absolute  certainty  that  thought  makes  character,  try.  And 
the  way  of  trying  is  very  simple,  and  proves  the  law  to  be  true  in  a  very 
short  time.  I  say  that  because  the  modern  people  are  always  in  a  hurry. 
But  remember  that  no  first-hand  knowledge  can  be  gained  without  pa- 
tience and  effort.  Suppose  you  want  to  find  out  whether  by  thought 
you  can  add  or  take  anything  from  your  character — selfishness,  or  any 


72       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

other  weakness;  let  us  take  as  an  example  that  you  are  irritable;  this  is 
not  a  crime,  but  a  very  common  and  ordinary  weakness.  You  recognize 
that  you  are  very  easily  made  irritable.  Having  recognized  it,  never 
think  of  it  again;  because  if  thought  builds  character,  thinking 
about  a  weakness  will  put  more  life  into  it  and  make  it  grow;  thought 
on  your  irritability  would  make  you  more  irritable,  and  strengthen  this 
undesirable  characteristic.  Indeed,  of  thinking  about  irritability  you 
will  think  about  the  opposite  quality — patience.  Think  about  patience 
for  some  five  minutes  every  morning;  not  once,  and  then  forgetting  it 
for  three  or  four  days,  and  then  doing  it  again.  Irregularity  undoes 
what  you  have  done,  and  you  will  be  only  marking  time  as  a  soldier 
does,  when  he  wants  to  keep  the  step  but  not  move  from  his  ground. 
You  must  do  it  regularly,  for  this  is  a  scientific  experiment.  Every 
morning,  then,  you  will  think  for  five  minutes  about  patience.  Think 
in  any  way  you  like;  vary  the  thinking;  for  it  does  not  matter  much 
what  you  think  provided  you  think  about  it;  one  very  good  way  is  to 
imagine  yourself  perfect  in  patience,  a  perfect  model  of  the  virtue  you 
are  trying  to  develop.  Then  think  of  the  most  aggravating  people  you 
know,  and  whom  you  often  meet,  and  imagine  them  provoking  you  as 
they  do  whenever  you  come  across  them.  Image  them  as  aggravating 
you  to  the  uttermost,  and  image  yourself  as  absolutely  patient  and  un- 
moved under  all  their  provocation.  There  must  not  be,  in  your  thought, 
the  least  giving  way  to  irritability.  Whatever  you  think  of  their  doing 
in  the  way  of  provocation  you  must  be  patient  in  this  mental  picture. 
Repeat  that,  with  whatever  variations  you  like,  every  morning  for  a 
week.  Then  you  will  find  that  the  thought  of  patience  comes  up  in  your 
mind  without  being  summoned  in  the  course  of  the  day.  That  is  the 
first  sign  that  your  morning  thought  is  working.  You  have  made  in 
your  mind  the  tendency  to  think  patience.  At  first  it  will  come  up  after 
a  little  outburst  of  irritability;  the  morning  thought  asserts  itself  and 
you  think:    "Oh!   I  ought  to  have  been  patient."      Go    on    still,    until 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  73 

with  the  provocation  comes  the  thought  of  patience,  and  there  is  an 
effort  to  be  patient.  Go  on  still,  until  the  thought  of  patience  comes 
before  provocation,  and  the  provocation  glances  off  from  the  mental 
habit  of  patience.  Still  go  on,  until  you  will  find  in  the  end  of  a  few 
months  (the  time  will  depend  upon  the  force  of  your  thoughts)  that 
you  have  established  patience  as  a  part  of  your  character,  and  you  no 
longer  feel  the  least  irritability  under  the  small  provocations  of  life.  I 
know  that  this  is  true,  because  I  have  done  it.  I  was  naturally  irritable, 
but  am  now  a  very  patient  person.  Try  it  for  yourselves,  and  when  you 
have  proved  the  law  you  will  have  a  feeling  of  certainty,  you  will  know 
that  it  is  true  that  thought  makes  character.  In  that  way  we  can  go 
on,  eliminating  weakness  after  weakness,  until  each  is  replaced  by  the 
corresponding  strength.  You  can  definitely  build  up  character,  build  it  as 
certainly  as  a  mason  can  build  up,  brick  by  brick,  a  wall.  There  shows 
itself  the  certainty  of  natural  law,  as  sure  in  the  mental  as  in  the 
physical  world;  as  you  think,  you  will  be.  And  if  you  will  try  that 
simple  experiment,  and,  remembering  the  importance  of  the  question, 
be  willing  to  sacrifice  to  it  five  minutes  a  day  for  a  few  months,  you 
will  find  that  you  have  that  power;  then,  as  far  as  character  is  con- 
cerned, you  have  become  the  master  who  knows  how  to  make  it,  and 
your  success  is  only  a  matter  of  time  and  of  resolute  effort.  Is  not 
this  enormously  better  than  going  on  all  your  life  sighing:  "Oh!  I  wish 
I  were  good !"  and  yet  going  on  every  day  doing  the  same  stupid  wrong 
things?  There  is  no  other  sure  way.  The  power  of  thought  is  the 
power  of  creation.  God  made  the  worlds  by  His  divine  thought.  We 
build  our  own  little  worlds  by  our  human  thought.  There  is  no  other 
creative  power  in  the  universe,  and  if  men  knew  and  used  that  power, 
their  evolution  would  be  much  more  rapid  than  it  is. 

(2)  Next  comes  desire.  Desire:  draws  together  the;  DesirER  and 
the  Desired.  This  may  not  at  first  strike  you  as  so  palpably  true  as 
the  preceding.     Yet  is  desire,  will,  the  one  motive  power  in  the  uni- 


74       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

verse.  You  see  it  as  attraction  everywhere.  You  find  it  present  in 
chemical  affinities  and  repulsions;  it  is  playing  in  the  magnet  which  at- 
tracts the  soft  iron;  in  every  force  of  cohesion  and  disintegration,  at- 
traction and  repulsion,  the  double-faced  power  in  nature,  it  is  the  one 
motive  power.  So  long  as  it  is  drawn  out  from  you  by  outer  objects 
we  call  it  desire.  You  desire  to  possess  this,  that  or  the  other.  As  long 
as  you  are  attracted  or  repelled  by  these  outside  things,  you  are  in  that 
butterfly  stage  of  consciousness  of  which  I  spoke,  moving  towards, 
grasping  at,  one  object  after  another,  inconstant,  errant.  But  when, 
instead  of  being  swayed  by  desire  for  outside  objects,  the  same  power 
is  directed  from  within,  not  by  outside  objects  but  by  accumulated  ex- 
periences weighed  by  reason,  then  we  call  it  Will.  The  difference  be- 
tween a  weak  and  a  strong  character  is  that  the  one  is  moved  by  out- 
side objects  at  the  moment,  and  so  cannot  be  depended  on,  and  the 
other  by  inside  experience,  which  decides  his  course  among  attractive 
and  unattractive  objects  and  may  be  relied  on.  There  is  the  tendency 
in  us,  desire,  to  move  towards  an  attractive  thing,  or  to  call  it  to  you, 
just  as  there  is  attraction  between  a  magnet  and  a  piece  of  soft  iron. 
It  is  the  same  power.  The  reason  for  that  attraction  is  that  there  is 
one  life  in  all,  and  the  lives  separated  by  their  different  forms  are  ever 
trying  to  rejoin;  all  things  tend  to  move  together,  or  to  push  one  an- 
other away,  whether  they  be  animate  or  inanimate,  to  use  the  ordinary 
words.  Everything  you  desire  to  possess  is  drawn  towards  you  by  that 
desire.  You  see  it  even  in  the  limit  of  one  short  life.  When  a  man 
sets  his  desire  on  an  object,  it  tends  to  come  within  his  grasp.  If  a 
person  has  a  strong  desire  to  visit  a  country,  the  probabilities  are  that, 
before  he  passes  away,  an  opportunity  will  present  itself  and  he  will 
find  himself  there.  And  when  you  come  to  the  wider  sweep  of  many 
lives,  then  indeed  you  realize  the  tremendous  power  of  desire — the  de- 
sire which  carries  a  man  to  the  place  where  it  can  be  satisfied,  which 
draws  him  back  to  the  spot  that  he  may  grasp  the  thing  after  which  he 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  75 

has  longed.  Desire  thus  makes  our  opportunities.  The  desire  draws 
the  object  towards  us,  and  carries  us  to  the  place  where  the  object  can 
be  attained.     That  is  the  second  of  the  three  subsidiary  laws. 

And  this  brings  with  it  a  warning.  Be  careful  what  you  desire. 
You  may  take  an  illustration  from  the  commonest  of  all  desires — the 
desire  for  money.  See  a  man  who  piles  up  an  immense  fortune;  after 
he  possesses  it,  he  often  does  not  know  what  to  do  with  it,  and  it  be- 
comes a  weariness  to  him.  There  is  nothing  more  common  than  that. 
He  has  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  life  in  accumulating  wealth,  and 
at  the  end  he  is  very  often  a  disappointed  and  disheartened  man.  As  long 
as  the  contrast  between  past  poverty  and  present  wealth  lasts  in  his 
mind,  the  wealth  is  most  enjoyable ;  but  gradually  he  becomes  habituated 
to  his  immense  power  of  acquiring  objects,  and  it  palls  upon  him.  In 
that  struggle  and  that  weariness  is  hidden  the  whole  secret  of  evolution. 
Man  advances  by  desires,  and  the  moment  he  grasps  the  object  of  desire 
it  breaks  into  pieces,  it  crumbles,  it  no  longer  satisfies  him.  It  is  by 
these  toys  which  so  attract  us  that  God  induces  His  children  to  make 
the  efforts  that  are  necessary  for  the  drawing  out  of  the  powers  of 
Divinity  within  them.  The  prizes  of  life  are  useful,  not  for  the  enjoy- 
ment they  yield  when  we  have  obtained  them,  but  for  the  efforts  that 
they  stimulate  while  they  are  unattained  and  desired.  But  there  is 
nothing  worse  for  progress  than  for  a  man  to  lose  desire,  until  his  will 
to  do  the  Will  of  God  has  taken  the  place  of  desire  for  individual  pos- 
session. He  falls  into  lethargy,  becomes  useless,  will  not  exert  himself. 
In  everything  there  is  inevitable  disappointment,  except  in  the  realization 
of  the  Self.    It  was  put  very  strongly  and  beautifully  by  George  Herbert: 

When  God  at  first  made  man, 

Having  a  glass  of  blessings  standing  by, 
"Let  me,"  He  said,  "pour  on  him  all  I  can, 
Let  the  world's  riches  which  expanded  lie 

Contract  into  a  span." 


76      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

Then  strength  first  made  its  way, 

Then  beauty  followed,  wisdom,  power,  pleasure; 
When  almost  all  was  spent,  God  made  a  stay, 
Perceiving  that  alone,  of  all  His  treasure, 

Rest  in  the  bottom  lay. 

"For  if  I  should,"  said  He, 

Bestow  this  jewel  also  on  my  creature, 
He  will  adore  my  gifts  instead  of  Me, 
And  rest  in  nature,  not  the  God  of  nature, 

So  both  should  losers  be. 

"Yes !  let  him  keep  the  rest, 

But  keep  them  with  repining  restlessness; 
Let  him  be  rich  and  weary,  that  at  least 
If  goodness  move  him  not,  then  weariness 

May  toss  him  to  my  breast." 

Everything  breaks  except  the  Divine.  Man,  having  tried  all  and  found 
everything  fail  him,  realizes  his  own  Divinity,  and  then  and  then  only 
does  he  find  rest  and  peace. 

(3)       AS    YOU    GIVE    HAPPINESS    OR    MISERY    TO    OTHERS    SO    SHALL    YOU 

reap  happiness  or  misery  for  YOURSELF.  According  to  the  effect  of 
our  action  upon  others  comes  a  similar  reaction  upon  ourselves.  This 
law  explains  a  class  of  life's  problems  which  I  did  not  touch  upon  last 
Sunday.  Sometimes  you  find  a  man  wrapped  in  luxury,  who  has  not  a 
good  character.  "Why  should  he  be  so  richly  endowed?  He  is  selfish 
and  altogether  undesirable."  Virtue  does  not  bring  wealth;  its  reward, 
as  Tennyson  sings,  is  "going  on,  and  never  to  die."  Suppose  a  man 
does   some  charitable  action,   gives   a   large  amount   of   money — as   in 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  77 

England  or  in  America  a  man  very  often  gives  a  park  to  a  town,  or  over 
here  gives  money  to  build  a  hospital,  not  because  he  cares  for  the  poor, 
but  because  he  hopes  to  get  a  title  by  his  gift,  to  be  made  in  England 
a  Baron  or  an  Earl,  or  here  a  Rai  or  Khan  Bahadur.  What  has  he  done 
really,  and  how  would  it  work  out?  He  has  given  pleasure  to  a  number 
of  poor  people;  the  park  gives  happiness  to  thousands  of  the  poor;  the 
hospital  brings  relief  to  thousands  of  suffering  men  and  women  and 
children.  The  harvest  of  this  will  be  physical  surroundings  of  a  com- 
fortable kind,  wealth,  luxury.  He  reaps  as  he  sowed.  As  by  sowing 
rice  you  reap  rice,  so  by  sowing  pleasure  you  reap  pleasure.  But — he  has 
done  it  from  a  selfish  motive,  not  for  the  sake  of  giving  pleasure,  but 
for  a  personal  gain.  How  does  that  work  out?  In  character.  It  works 
out  in  his  next  birth  as  a  selfish  character,  and  that  means  unhappiness, 
no  matter  what  the  outward  comforts  may  be.  It  appears  a  paradox; 
outward  comfort  and  luxury,  and  a  character  that  none  can  admire ;  and 
yet  the  law  has  worked  out.  Nature  has  paid  him  physical  pleasure 
for  physical  pleasure.  She  pays  for  the  selfishness  of  the  motive  with 
the  selfish  character,  which  ensures  personal  unhappiness  in  the  midst 
of  all  his  luxury.  Every  law  works  on  its  own  lines,  with  its  own  in- 
evitable consequences;  nothing  is  forgotten;  nothing  is  omitted;  nothing 
is  forgiven;  and  all  these  methods  by  which  karma  is  working  are  the 
explanations  of  the  paradoxes  of  human  life. 

Realize  those  three  laws  and  that  you  can  make  your  future  by  ap- 
plying them;  you  make  character  by  thinking,  you  make  opportunity 
for  the  gaining  of  objects  by  desiring,  you  make  happiness  physically, 
mentally,  morally,  by  giving  physical,  mental,  and  moral  happiness  to 
others. 

Seeing  these  laws  and  understanding  to  some  extent  how  to  apply 
them,  let  us  carry  the  study  a  little  further  and  meet  one  or  two  of  the 
difficulties  that  rise  in  the  mind  before  the  whole  of  this  is  understood. 


78       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

Naturally  so  many  interlinking  and  interweaving  desires,  thoughts,  and 
actions  must  make  a  very  complicated  web  of  life.  How  shall  we  under- 
stand how  all  the  past  works  in  the  present,  and  how  will  these  princi- 
ples enable  us  to  guide  our  conduct  more  wisely?  A  little  knowledge 
of  this  law  is  often  distinctly  dangerous,  because  one  of  the  results  of 
knowing  a  little  about  it  is  the  tendency  to  sit  down  and  say:  "Oh,  it 
is  my  karma,"  just  as  an  ignorant  person  might  sit  at  the  bottom  of  the 
stairs  and  say:  "I  must  move  down  towards  the  centre  of  the  earth, 
and  so  I  cannot  go  up."  This  little  knowledge  has  caused  karma  to  have 
a  very  paralyzing  effect  upon  many  Indians.  Instead  of  realizing  that, 
like  all  the  laws  of  nature,  it  is  not  a  compelling  but  an  enabling  force, 
they  have  sat  down  with  the  idea  that  they  can  do  nothing  because  it 
would  be  "against  karma."  It  is  not  the  fault  of  the  old  writers;  they 
have  put  the  whole  thing  clearly  enough.  You  remember  how  Yud- 
hishthira  went  to  Bhishma,  the  Master  of  Dharma,  and  asked  him  which 
was  the  greater,  exertion  or  destiny,  the  present  effort  or  the  past  le- 
sults.  Bhishma  went  into  a  long  explanation  and  showed  how  karma 
was  made  up  of  past  thoughts,  actions  and  desires.  Having  shown  the 
strands  which  made  the  rope  of  karma,  he  wound  up  by  saying:  "Ex- 
ertion is  greater  than  destiny."  How  can  that  be  true,  when  there  are 
so  many  lives  behind  you?  Exertion  is  greater  than  destiny,  when  there 
is  this  immense  mass  of  causes  from  the  past,  and  you  have  to  meet 
them  in  the  present?  Let  us  see  the  reason  for  the  statement.  Consider 
the  results  of  one  day's  activity.  Look  back  in  the  evening,  and  see 
what  your  thoughts  have  been;  they  have  been  very  mixed,  some  good, 
some  bad,  and  some  indifferent;  the  net  results,  the  balance,  is  very 
little,  either  of  good  or  bad.  So  with  your  desires;  they  have  been  very 
mixed,  some  noble  and  good,  some  poor  and  even  base;  the  net  outcome 
of  this  second  force  is  not  all  in  one  direction.  So  with  actions ;  some 
of  our  actions  have  made  people  happy,  some  of  them  were  unkind; 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  79 

the  net  result  is  a  balance  almost  between  the  two.     Apply  that  to  all 
days  of  all  the  past  lives  and  you  will  realize  that  there  is  not  one  great 
stream  of  karma  of  one  sort  which  sweeps  you  on,  but  a  very  large 
number  of  small  streams  of  karma,  working  in  different  directions,  some 
neutralizing  one  another;  so  that  the  net  result  is,  as  a  rule,  extremely 
small.     A  man  may  have  thought  so  steadily  and  deliberately  that  he 
has  made  a  part  of  his  character  undesirable;  very  well.     Then  by  per- 
sistent and  steady  thinking  in  the  opposite  direction  he  will   have  to 
undo  what  he  has  done.     But  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  that  happen 
to  you,  many  streams   are  converging  upon  you   and  pressing  you   in 
different  directions,  and  you  are  now  mingling  with  them  present  thoughts, 
desires,  and  activity.     Hence,  it  is  often  the  case  that  the  force  of  the 
moment,  the  thought,  the  desire  of  the  moment,  is — to  change  the  meta- 
phor— just  enough  to  balance  the  opposing  weights,  and  turn  the  scale 
a  little  on  the  one  side  or  the  other.   It  is  not  as  though  in  the  balance  of 
karma  all  the  weights  were  in  one  scale  and  none  in  the  other.     As  a 
matter  of  fact,  they  are  often  very  evenly  balanced  and  a  finger's  weight 
will  often  make  one  scale  go  down.     That  is  why  Bhishma  tried  to  stim- 
ulate his  hearers  to  exertion,  saying:    "Exertion  is  greater  than  destiny." 
You  thought,  desired  and  acted  in  the  past,  and  now,  out  of  all  that 
mass  of  thoughts,  desires  and  actions,  some  are  with  you  and  some  are 
against  you,  and  you,  the  present  thinker,  desirer  and  actor,  may  add  the 
weight  which  makes  one  scale  or  the  other  touch  the  ground. 

There  are  indeed  cases  where  bad  karma  is  so  one-sided  that  it  is 
too  strong  for  present  exertion  to  overbear  it.  In  such  case,  the  knower 
of  karma  ought  to  strive  against  the  evil  to  the  very  last  ounce  of  his 
strength;  for  by  this  he  diminishes  the  force  of  the  past  which  is  work- 
ing in  that  evil  direction,  and  thus  weakens  it  for  the  future.  Suppose 
a  man  in  the  past  has  always  desired  things  that  are  not  his  own,  and 
has  in  this  life  a  strong  tendency  to  thieve.     Suppose  he  gives  way  to 


80      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

that,  when  it  comes  upon  him  as  an  over-mastering  temptation.  Should 
he  sit  down  and  say:  "I  cannot  help  it"?  He  should  fight  against  it 
to  the  last  moment  of  resistant  power.  Even  though  he  may  then  fail,  may 
fall  again  into  crime,  the  force  will  be  so  much  the  weaker  in  the  future 
for  every  effort  which  he  has  made.  He  may  fail  for  the  moment,  but  he 
will  conquer  to-morrow.  The  lesson  that  comes  out  of  the  knowledge 
of  karma  is  that  whatever  the  temptation  may  be,  we  should  fight  against 
it  until  our  last  bit  of  strength  is  gone.  Though  men  may  judge  you 
hardly  for  your  final  failure,  knowing  nothing  of  the  preceding  struggle, 
the  law  of  karma  has  placed  your  endeavors  to  the  credit  side  of  your 
account. 

Take  another  case.  Let  us  think  of  a  case  wherein  I  have  often  heard 
karma  misused,  both  in  the  East  and  in  the  West,  by  people  who  have 
begun  to  study  it  but  have  not  understood  its  working.  When  another 
person  is  in  difficulty  or  suffering,  they  say:  "It  is  his  karma:  why 
should  I  help  him?"  There  are  all  kinds  of  evils  and  sufferings  around 
us,  and  it  is  true  that  they  are  the  results  of  karma,  but  that  is  no  reason 
why  we  should  not  labor  to  change  them.  Bad  thoughts,  desires  and 
actions  have  created  the  sufferings;  but  that  does  not  justify  the  present 
withholding  of  good  thoughts,  desires  and  actions  which  will  change 
the  sufferings  into  happiness.  As  yesterday  created  to-day,  so  are  we 
to-day  creating  to-morrow.  Even,  selfishly,  you  should  help  when  another 
suffers  under  his  karma,  for  if  you  do  not  do  your  best  to  help  him, 
then  you  are  making  a  karma  which  will  entail  absence  of  help  in  the 
hour  of  your  own  need.  It  is  no  answer  to  the  cry  of  human  pain  to 
say:  "You  deserve  it:  you  were  wrong  or  foolish."  Your  duty  is 
always  to  help.  It  is  true  that  Divine  Justice  rules  the  world,  and  that 
none  can  suffer  aught  which  he  does  not  deserve;  but  the  carrying  out 
of  a  law  of  nature  which  inflicts  suffering  may  be  safely  left  by  us  who 
are  blind  in  the  Divine  Hands  which  guide  the  world.     Leave  you  the 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  81 

Rod  of  Justice  to  God  who  alone  can  wield  it  rightly,  and  be  you  the 
messengers  of  the  Divine  love  and  mercy  to  the  sufferers.  Know  that 
if  the  law  exacts  suffering,  nothing  that  you  can  do  will  prevent  its 
working,  but  you  may  be  the  messengers  chosen  to  carry  the  karmically 
due  relief  to  the  one  who  has  paid  his  debt  of  pain.  Will  you  refuse 
to  be  the  agent  of  the  law  which  brings  the  sufferer  before  you  in  order 
that  you  may  relieve?  If  we  make  our  own  hardness,  our  own  selfish- 
ness, our  own  indifference  take  shelter  under  a  law  that  is  not  under- 
stood, we  only  add  a  blasphemy  against  justice  to  the  faults  we  have 
already  accumulated,  and  in  the  hour  of  our  own  suffering  there  will  be 
no  hand  outstretched  to  help.  That  will  be  the  karma  of  leaving  a 
brother  unhelped.  This  mistake  arises  from  not  understanding,  or  from 
knowing  a  little  bit  of  the  law  and  not  realizing  its  workings.  If  any- 
thing is  a  man's  karma,  you  cannot  prevent  it  from  coming  to  him.  You 
may  leave  the  law  of  karma  to  take  care  of  itself.  Nature  does  not  want 
our  help  in  defending  her  laws.  Our  duty  is  action,  work  and  rescue 
when  possible;  we  can  only  work  within  the  law  and  through  the  law. 
And  if  karma  neutralizes  our  efforts  we  can  only  submit.  A  man  who 
knows  nothing  sometimes  acts  more  effectively  than  a  man  who  knows 
only  a  little.  An  Englishman,  not  knowing  the  law  of  karma,  will  fling 
himself  against  an  obstacle  and  will  often  compel  circumstances  to  give 
way  before  him;  while  an  Indian,  who  knows  a  little  of  the  law,  will 
sit  down  helplessly  in  front  of  similar  circumstances  and  suffer  under 
them.  Neither  of  these  conditions  is  good.  It  is  not  good  not  to  know 
the  law.  It  is  not  good  to  have  only  enough  knowledge  to  paralyze.  It 
is  good  to  know  the  law  and  to  use  it.  The  whole  of  it  is  in  the  Shastras 
for  the  Hindus,  but  these  are  forgotten  and  so  men  blunder  in  their  ways. 
Suppose  we  apply  this  law  of  karma  to  one  or  two  of  the  problems 
I  turned  aside  from  last  week:  The  death  of  a  son,  but  not  now  of  a 
babe.     The  case  was  that  a  young  man,  seventeen  or  eighteen  years  of 


82       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

age,  the  only  son  of  his  parents — the  boy  suddenly  died.  He  passed 
away  and  the  parents  came  to  me  in  terrible  distress  and  said:  "Can 
you  tell  us  what  is  this  karma  which  leaves  unhappy  children  with  poor 
and  helpless  parents  who  care  little  for  them  and  cannot  provide  for 
them,  and  takes  away  this  our  son,  whom  we  love  so  dearly,  and  can 
put  out  in  life,  surrounded  with  every  comfort?"  Such  questions  are 
often  asked,  so  I  looked  back  into  the  past,  and  I  found  the  reason. 
They  had  been  husband  and  wife  in  a  previous  birth,  and  had  had 
three  or  four  children  of  their  own.  A  brother  had  died,  leaving  an 
orphan  child  with  none  to  care  for  it.  To  leave  a  brother's  child  in  the 
streets  was  impossible,  so  they  took  him  in.  But  they  were  not  at  all 
kind  to  the  boy.  They  made  him  a  household  drudge,  fed  him  badly, 
treated  him  unkindly,  and  he  died  between  the  ages  of  seventeen  and' 
eighteen,  heart-broken,  for  he  was  an  affectionate  little  fellow  and  had 
had  no  love  given  to  him  but  only  harshness.  He  came  back  as  their 
own  son,  with  their  whole  hopes,  as  father  and  mother,  centred  upon 
that  one  child,  with  all  their  strong  affection  clinging  to  him ;  karma 
struck  him  down  and  took  him  away  from  them  at  the  time  when  he 
had  died  in  the  previous  life,  and  left  their  home  desolate.  Thus  karma 
works.  There  is  no  escape.  There  is  no  such  thing  in  nature  as  for- 
giveness, there  is  only  conquest  by  knowledge,  when  you  learn  to  bal- 
ance one  force  against  another,  and  neutralize  past  evil  by  present  good. 
Studying  in  this  way  the  working  of  the  law,  you  gradually  become 
scientific  in  the  view  that  you  take  of  life.  You  do  not  complain,  for 
you  know  that  you  are  yourself  the  cause  both  of  your  sufferings  and 
of  your  joys.  The  scientific  man,  if  his  experiment  does  not  work  out, 
blames  himself,  not  nature.  If  he  had  arranged  his  apparatus  and  his 
materials  according  to  the  laws,  it  must  have  worked  out,  for  nature 
never  fails  us;  if  the  experiment  does  not  come  off,  he  knows  that  the 
error  lies  with  him  and  not  with  nature,  and  he  searches  for  his  mis- 
take.    That  is  the  way  in  which  a  knowledge  of  karma  works  in  our 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  83 

lives.  We  may  not  always  know  why  a  particular  trouble  has  arisen, 
but  we  know  that  it  cannot  have  come  without  a  cause,  and  we  at  once 
concern  ourselves  with  the  best  way  of  meeting  the  outcome  of  the  past 
in  order  that  out  of  the  trouble  of  the  present  we  may  make  good  destiny 
for  the  future.  In  all  the  troubles  of  life  a  knowledge  of  karma  is  of 
the  greatest  help.  No  injustice,  no  partiality,  anywhere;  every  man  reap- 
ing the  harvest  of  which  he  sowed  the  seed. 

You  may  say  that  karma  is  a  difficult  philosophical  problem,  and  that 
you  cannot  expect  the  masses  to  understand  it.  That  is  not  found  im- 
possible in  India.  A  peasant  in  the  field  will  tell  you  in  simple  language 
what  karma  is.  He  understands  that  he  made  his  present  life,  and  that 
in  his  present  he  is  making  his  future.  An  Indian  and  an  Englishman 
were  talking  about  karma.  The  Englishman  said :  "People  cannot  under- 
stand it.  It  is  not  for  the  common  people."  They  were  passing  a  house, 
where  a  lot  of  coolies,  bricklayers,  were  working.  The  Indian  said: 
"Ask  one  of  those  men  why  you  are  what  you  are,  and  he  is  where  he 
is."  "He  won't  understand."  "Never  mind;  go  and  ask."  He  went 
up  and  asked  the  coolie:  "Why  am  I  rich  and  comfortable,  and  why 
are  you  here  working  in  the  hot  sun?"  "Because  in  the  past  you  earned 
what  you  have  now,  and  in  the  past  I  earned  mine.  And  if  I  do  well, 
I  shall  be  comfortable  and  happy  in  my  next  birth,  and  if  you  do  badly 
now,  you  will  be  unhappy  in  yours."  Karma  influenced  the  man's  life 
and  work.  He  could  not  have  talked  about  it  as  I  have  been  talking 
to  you  today.  He  could  not  have  argued  or  used  philosophical  terms. 
But  he  knew  the  main  facts  and  lived  by  them;  not  the  scientific  state- 
ment of  natural  law,  but  the  effect  upon  life  of  conduct  in  successive 
births.  There  is  nothing  that  rules  men's  lives  more  practically  than 
this  law  of  karma.  I  have  indeed  pointed  out  that  a  little  knowledge 
may  paralyze.  But  the  remedy  for  that  is  not  to  take  away  the  little 
knowledge  men  have,  but  to  increase  the  knowledge,  and  to  show  it  as 
a  stimulus  to  action,  because  it  gives  power. 


84       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

There  is  one  difficulty  which  may  strike  some  of  you  as  to  desire.  It 
does  seem  to  be  quite  under  our  control.  How  can  we  weigh  our  desires 
and  choose  those  which  we  will  allow  ourselves  to  feel,  and  thus  choose 
also  the  objects  we  shall  possess  and  the  lot  which  we  shall  enjoy?  We 
want,  we  wish.  How  can  we  make  ourselves  like  what  we  do  not  like, 
and  dislike  what  we  like?  You  cannot  do  anything  directly  to  change 
desire  by  desire ;  you  cannot  cure  it  by  desire.  Yet  you  are  not  powerless. 
There  are  three  parts  in  every  activity :  the  desire,  the  thought  and  the  act. 
Thought  once  more  is  your  helper.  If  you  find  that  you  have  desires 
which,  working  out,  will  ultimately  bring  unsatisfactory  results;  if  you 
find  physical  desires  too  strong — love  of  food,  drink,  bodily  enjoyment  of 
any  kind — you  cannot  directly  stop  these,  but  you  can  change  them  by 
thought.  Look  into  your  life  and  see  what  desires  you  have  which  will 
"become  wombs  of  pain."  Suppose  it  is  gluttony ;  you  are  fond  of  dainty 
food;  you  eat  too  much.  You  must  say  to  yourself — not  at  the  moment 
of  enjoyment — but  when  you  are  quiet  and  in  a  thoughtful  mood:  "What 
will  be  the  result  if  I  give  way  to  this?  I  shall  get  gradually  too  stout 
and  helpless;  I  shall  disorder  my  digestion;  I  shall  become  diseased. 
I  will  stop  this  desire,  because  it  leads  to  suffering  in  the  long  run." 
Then  by  that  thought  you  begin  to  rein  in  your  desire.  You  mentally 
picture  the  disastrous  results  of  the  vice,  and  thus  breed  a  disgust  for  it. 
You  deliberately  make  up  your  mind  not  to  yield  to  a  passing  pleasure 
which  brings  long-continued  pain  as  a  result.  By  thought  you  struggle 
with  and  grip  the  desire.  You  can  thus  use  thought  to  master  desire  and 
to  change  it.  If  you  thus  picture  the  painful  results  vividly  and  see  how 
the  vice  will  lead  to  wrong  or  suffering,  then  you  can  deliberately  set  your 
thought  against  it.  Choose  your  wishes  well  and  scientifically,  with  a 
view  to  their  results.  You  may  have  a  choice  between  spending  a  rupee 
upon  a  book  or  a  dinner.  You  had  better  spend  only  two  or  three  annas 
on  the  dinner,  and  the  rest  on  a  book,  for  the  book  lasts  while  the  dinner  is 


THE  LAW  OF  ACTION  AND  REACTION.  85 

soon  over  and  the  pleasure  it  gave  is  forgotten.  Deliberate  choice  by 
thought — you  being  a  reasoning  creature — is  your  weapon  against  every 
desire  that  has  in  it  pain  as  a  result.  It  means,  certainly,  that  your  life 
will  become  thoughtful,  that  you  can  no  longer  live  without  reflection; 
but  surely  you  who  are  men  and  women  should  not  live  as  the  brutes  do, 
moved  by  passion  and  desire,  thoughtless  of  the  future.  Your  very  name 
means  the  thinker,  for  you  are  men.  The  root  from  which  comes  'man/ 
m  European  languages,  is  the  Sanskrit  root  'man,'  think.  You  are 
thinkers  by  your  very  name,  by  the  place  you  are  in  through  evolution, 
by  the  rung  upon  which  you  stand  on  the  ladder  of  lives.  For  those  who 
reason,  for  those  who  think,  for  those  who  deliberate,  knowledge  is  abso- 
lutely necessary,  for  reason  is  futile  unless  there  are  data  on  which  that 
reason  can  work,  compare,  weigh,  and  pronounce  judgment.  Therefore 
is  it  necessary  you  should  study  the  law  and,  understanding  it,  act  in 
accordance   with   it. 

Such  is  the  object  with  which  I  have  been  speaking  to  you  this  after- 
noon. I  have  put  to  you  the  fact  of  karma,  with  the  law  in  its  triple 
division,  bearing  on  desire,  thought  and  act.  Instead  of  being  discon- 
tented with  what  you  are,  make  up  your  mind  to  be  that  which  you  want 
to  be.  Clear,  strong  thought  is  for  the  reasonable  man  and  woman,  and 
just  as  in  the  physical  world,  if  you  find  things  not  as  you  would  have 
them,  just  as  in  that  you  look  for  the  causes,  and  having  found  them 
change  the  causes  and  with  that  the  effects ;  so  also  with  your  character, 
with  your  desires  and  your  actions,  realize  the  creative  power  of  your 
thought,  the  directive  power  of  your  desires,  and  the  fact  that  your  happi- 
ness and  misery  depend  upon  your  action  upon  others.  Knowing  the  law 
by  study,  act  upon  the  law  as  reasonable  beings ;  create  for  yourselves  a 
better  destiny,  a  nobler  future.  Remember  that  as  thought  is  a  creative 
power  and  builds  character,  so  is  character  the  chief  factor  in  your  happi- 
ness, that  upon  which  it  most  depends.  Noble  character,  strong  char- 
acter, developed  character,  mean  a  great  destiny  in  the  future.  Yours  is 
the  power  of  making  it,  for  the  choice — Ah !  that  is  in  your  own  hands. 


86       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 


VI. 

MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS. 

We  have  come  to  the  last  of  the  present  course  of  lectures,  and  I  am  to 
deal  with  man's  life  in  three  worlds,  not  only  in  one.  Let  me  begin  by  re- 
minding you  that  only  at  certain  times  in  the  history  of  the  world  does 
the  idea  arise  and  spread  through  certain  sections  of  the  population,  that 
all  that  there  is  of  man  is  what  we  see  of  him  in  this  life  and  this  world, 
limited  to  the  time  between  birth  and  death,  and  with  no  relation  to  other 
worlds  nor  to  consciousness  connected  with  those  worlds.  It  is  a  re- 
markable and  interesting  fact  that  that  phase,  which  appears  over  and 
over  again  in  the  world's  history,  seems  always  to  appear  at  correspond- 
ing periods.  It  is  never  seen  when  a  civilization  is  young  and  vigorous. 
It  is  found  when  a  civilization  has  grown  old,  when  it  has  become  over- 
luxurious,  when  bodily  enjoyments  are  dominating  the  life  of  the  intelli- 
gence, when  high  living,  to  use  a  well-known  phrase,  has  rather  taken 
the  place  of  high  thinking — and  that  always  comes  hand-in-hand  with  the 
decay  and  the  speedy  passing  away  of  the  civilization.  Lord  Bacon 
pointed  to  this  fact  in  one  of  his  famous  Essays,  in  which  he  remarked 
that  times  of  atheism  are  always  civil  times,  quiet  times.  (I  do  not  know 
whether  he  would  have  said  the  same  after  the  French  Revolution,  but  we 
must  remember  that  the  Reign  of  Terror  occurred  after  the  reproclama- 
tion  of  a  Divine  Being,  so  that  the  blood-shed  cannot  fairly  be  put  down 
to    philosophical    thought,    however    sceptical.)     The    fact    is    that   ma- 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  87 

terialism  appears  always  when  a  civilization  has  touched  its  climax,  the 
climax  which  precedes  its  decay.  It  seems  as  though  in  the  normal  healthy 
condition  of  the  mind  and  body  of  man,  he  has  never  dreamt  of  consider- 
ing himself  as  confined  merely  to  the  physical  life.  When,  however,  the 
body  is  over-bearing  the  mind,  when  the  senses  are  dominating  the  intelli- 
gence, then  it  is  that  in  over-luxurious  living,  in  the  pampering  of  the 
body  and  the  over-indulgence  of  the  senses,  the  idea  comes  to  the  front 
that  man  is  not  an  immortal  being.  We  also  notice  that  it  is  in  the  midst 
of  such  a  decaying  and  materialistic  civilization  that  you  will  always  find 
the  embryo,  the  beginning,  of  a  new  civilization,  which  is  to  replace  the 
one  which  tends  to  disappear.  Imperial  Rome  became  distinctly  material- 
istic before  the  decay  of  her  power  began,  but  then,  in  the  very  midst  of 
that  failing  Empire  the  new  faith  which  was  to  build  Christendom  was 
growing.  For  ever  in  history,  just  at  the  time  when  many  are  losing 
belief  in  spiritual  things,  there  is  a  new  influence  poured  out  from  the 
spiritual  realms,  so  that  the  embryo  of  the  new  civilization  is  seen  within 
the  dying  body  of  the  old. 

Surely  something  of  this  kind  has  again  been  seen  in  our  own  day.  If 
you  look  back  over  the  last  thirty  years  of  the  last  century  you  will  see 
that  there  was  an  enormous  spread  of  militant  unbelief,  that  science 
was  becoming  very  sceptical,  that  her  very  discoveries  were  leading  her 
deeper  and  deeper  into  materialism.  Side  by  side  with  the  decay  of 
religion  and  with  the  dangers  menacing  it  from  all  sides,  there  was  a 
similar  tendency  in  literature  and  in  art,  which  both  became  imitative 
rather  than  creative.  Most  of  all  was  this  seen  in  France,  where  ma- 
terialism had  triumphed  more  than  elsewhere,  and  French  literature  and 
art  suffered  more  than  in  the  more  religious  nations ;  her  literature  be- 
came unclean,  her  art  indecent,  ugly  reproductions  of  ugly  facts.  But 
now,  everywhere,  there  is  seen  a  great  impulse  to  the  religious  life  of  the 
world ;  and  with  it  has  come  a  tendency  to  new  schools  of  art ;  you  can 


88       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

see  it  in  painting,  in  sculpture,  and  in  music  especially;  for  ever  where 
there  is  a  fresh  impulse  of  spiritual  life,  there  is  also  a  fresh  impulse  to  a 
new  creative  art — creative,  not  imitative.  A  new  civilization  is  once  more 
being  prepared,  and  although  the  present  civilization  is  passing  into  decay, 
humanity,  as  ever  before,  will  go  forward  with  new  strength  and  vigor, 
prepared  to  reclothe  itself  in  a  new  garment  of  glory  and  of  beauty. 

There  are  many  signs  to  day,not  only  of  a  revival  of  religion — though 
that  is  seen  everywhere — but  also  of  the  recognition,  outside  of  what 
technically  is  called  religion,  of  man's  larger  consciousness;  that  he  is 
related  to  more  worlds  than  one ;  that  he  is  in  actual  touch,  while  still  in 
the  physical  world,  with  worlds  which  are  not  physical,  nor  cognizable 
by  the  senses  of  the  flesh.  I  am  not  thinking  of  the  Theosophical  Society 
especially,  but  rather  of  the  wider  movement  in  the  world  at  large,  which 
we  always  call  the  'Theosophical  Movement' ;  we  see,  especially  among 
psychologists,  the  tendency  to  reconize  and  to  try  to  understand  the 
workings  of  human  consciousness  outside  the  brain ;  the  recognition  of 
worlds  which  we  dimly  sense,  but  do  not  yet  perceive,  which  are  not  yet 
understood  but  are  dimly  felt  to  exist;  that  which  has  been  laid  stress 
upon  by  such  men  as  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  and  very  definitely  by  Frederic 
Myers,  who  speaks  of  a  planetary  and  a  cosmic  consciousness:  meaning 
by  the  first  a  consciousness  contacting  only  our  planet,  our  earth,  and 
working  through  the  brain;  meaning  by  a  cosmic  consciousness,  a  con- 
sciousness which  stretches  out  towards  realms  outside  our  earth,  and 
which  comes  into  relation  with  a  larger  life,  and  scans  wider  horizons; 
and  he  pointed  out  in  Human  Personality  how  many  indications  there 
were,  especially  in  our  own  days,  that  man  was  beginning  to  develop 
within  the  circle  of  his  planetary  consciousness  the  recognition  of  a  cos- 
mos, not  only  of  a  planet;  and  that  that  larger  consciousness  was  the 
justification  for  religion,  for  art,  for  poetry,  in  a  word  for  the  Beautiful 
in  life,  all  of  which  was  useless  from  the  standpoint  of  ordinary  meterial- 
ism.     He  quoted  a  statement  from  a  French  materialist  that  the  object 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  89 

of  evolution  was  that  man  should  conquer  the  physical  world,  subdue  it 
to  his  service,  and  that  everything  which  did  not  tend  to  that  one  end 
was  merely  a  bye-product.     In  manufacturing,  as  you  know,  when  you 
desire  to  produce  a  certain  thing,  and  in  the  course  of  production  certain 
other  things  arise,  which  may  or  may  not  be  useful,  but  are  not  meant 
to  be  produced,  such  things  are  termed  bye-products.     So  it  is,  he  said, 
with  evolution.     The  goal  of  evolution  is  the  conquest  of  this  planet  by 
man,  using  material  means ;  and  everything  else  which  arises  from  man  is 
a  bye-product;  among  these  bye-products  he  classes  religion  and  art;  in 
fact  he  gave  a  list  of  the  things  which  make  man  MAN,  which  make  man 
more  than  the  head  of  the  animal  kingdom.     If  we  have  an  exquisite 
nervous  system  which  puts  us  into  touch  with  the  physical  world  only, 
and  if  we  possess  nothing  more  delicate,  bringing  us  by  similar  means 
into  similar  contacts  with  other  worlds,  if  our  consciousness  be  earth- 
born  and  earth-perishing,  it  is  very  difficult,  nay,  it  is  impossible,  to  meet 
this  argument  of  the  materialist;  in  such  cases  all  those  things  are  fanci- 
ful, imaginary,  unreal ;  they  do  not  help  in  the  evolutionary  process,  they 
are  merely  bye-products,  and  sensible  men  ought  to  concentrate  them- 
selves upon  the  conquest  of  this  world,  the  only  world  they  can  have. 
If  that  be  true,  human  life  becomes  miserably  poor ;  for  the  very  things 
which  makes  life  real,  which  make  it  worth  living,  which  raise  man  above 
the   tyranny  of   circumstances,   are   those  very  bye-products.     We   may 
lose  money,  health,  and  everything  that  belongs  to  the  physical  body  apart 
from  the  working  of  the  mind,  but  if  religion,  imagination,  literature  and 
art  be  left  to  us,  then  life  would  still  be  worth  living.     These  do  not  de- 
pend upon  wealth,  they  do  not  depend  upon  other  people,  they  do  not 
depend  upon  circumstances ;  they  are  inner  treasures ;  none  can  rob  us  of 
them,  they  are  of  a  world  whereinto  destruction  cannot  enter ;  upon  these 
men's  happiness  really  depends,  and  they  stretch  onwards  into  worlds 
immortal,  into  worlds  which  death  cannot  wither. 

Let  us  consider  the  life  in  the  physical  world  first,  and  see  what  it 


90      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY.  ' 

really  is.  There  is  a  consciousness,  a  living — thinking,  acting,  willing — 
Self.  That  is  the  essential  man.  But  how  does  that  consciousness  come 
into  touch  with  this  physical  world?  Not  directly,  but  indirectly, 
through  a  certain  mechanism  made  out  of  the  matter  of  the  physical 
world,  which  has  been  formed  and  shaped  into  organs  wherein  and 
wherethrough  that  consciousness  can  work.  If  you  take  such  an  unfor- 
tunate creature  as  that  American  girl  (Helen  Keller)  who  became  dumb, 
deaf,  blind,  had  no  sense  left,  except  touch,  taste,  and  smell,  to  connect 
her  with  the  physical  world,  and  think  how  that  outer  world  could  be  con- 
tacted by  her,  you  will  at  once  realize  that  such  a  consciousness  is  in 
prison,  shut  out  from  the  world  in  which  we  all  are  living.  The  use  of 
the  body,  the  perfection  of  the  body,  depends  on  its  power  of  contacting 
the  world  for  which  it  is  built,  thus  bringing  the  consciousness,  which  is 
yourself,  into  touch  with  the  world  that  surrounds  you.  Every  step  for- 
ward in  physical  evolution  is  the  making  of  the  body  a  better  means  of 
contact  with  the  outer  world.  The  value  of  the  body  is  that  it  is  the 
apparatus  by  which  the  consciousness  comes  into  touch  with  the  outer 
world;  and  this  is  the  thought  which  must  be  definitely  grasped  in  order 
that  you  may  realize  the  relation  that  exists  between  an  Intelligence  and 
the  body  which  he  wears. 

We  have  here  a  number  of  senses — five  senses ;  but  the  proverb  says 
seven,  and  we  Theosophists  say  that  is  so,  that  there  are  two  still  to  be 
developed,  that  we  are  still  in  course  of  physical  evolution ;  that  there  are 
two  more  senses  still  to  be  developed  in  the  physical  body  which  will 
bring  the  consciousness  more  into  touch  with  the  outer  world ;  we  Theoso- 
phists say  that  these  two  senses  will  work  through  two  little  organs  in 
the  brain,  that  ordinary  science  will  tell  you  are  vestigial  organs — that  is, 
organs  which  were  once  active  but  have  become  atrophied,  of  which  only 
a  remnant  remains,  no  longer  utilizable ;  these  two  organs  are  the  pituitary 
body  and  the  pineal  gland.  We  declare  not  simply  on  theory,  but  on 
observation  and  experience,  that  these  two  organs  are  not  simply  vestigial, 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  91 

but  are  rudimentary,  preparing  for  the  future.  We  do  not  deny  that  the 
pineal  gland  was  once  an  eye,  a  'third  eye,'  i.  e.,  a  medial  eye;  we  admit 
it  to  the  full ;  but  we  say  that  that  organ  has  another  function  to  play  in 
the  future,  a  function  which  it  is  playing  at  the  present  time  in  some 
people  who  have  artificially  quickened  its  evolution.  This  development 
will  become  normal  and  universal,  as  the  race  in  general  develops.  The 
pineal  gland  is  really  the  organ  by  which  thought  is  transferred  from 
brain  to  brain;  an  organ  which  will  bring  the  human  being  into  touch 
with  the  currents  of  thought  which  are  continually  playing  in  the  world 
round  us,  which  will  be  able  to  receive  them  and  to  utilize  them ;  and  that 
as  literally  as  the  eye  to-day  receives  the  waves  in  ether  that  we  call  light, 
and  by  these  rays  is  able  to  see,  so  will  this  pineal  gland  in  the  future  re-» 
ceive  the  vibrations  in  the  physical  matter  set  going  by  thought,  and  utilize 
those  for  communication.  The  pituitary  body  has  another  function.  It 
is  the  organ  which  puts  us  in  connection  with  the  astral  world.  When  it 
is  working  in  the  human  brain,  active,  having  been  brought  into  activity 
by  meditation,  then  you  have  a  bridge  between  the  consciousness  in  the 
physical  and  the  next,  or  astral,  worlds. 

Both  worlds  are  present  with  you  at  the  same  time,  all  the  time  that 
you  are  awake;  when  you  go  to  sleep,  you  leave  the  physical  world  and 
are  living  in  the  astral  world.  If  the  pituitary  body  be  in  full  working 
consciousness,  then  that  which  you  do  in  the  astral  world,  or,  as  you 
would  say,  in  your  sleep,  remains  in  consciousness  as  a  memory,  just  as 
tkere  remains  a  memory  of  what  you  did  yesterday.  This  part  of  the 
physical  brain  is  now  undergoing  evolution,  and  so  near  is  it  to  function- 
ing in  our  own  days  that  a  very  little  stimulation  will  bring  it  into  activity. 
That  pituitary  body  is  the  next  sense  organ,  and  its  workings  will  enable 
man  to  know  accurately  and  definitely  in  his  brain-consciousness  that 
which  he  now  senses  dimly;  to  see  that  other  world  as  now  he  sees  the 
physical ;  and  to  unify  the  physical  and  the  astral  consciousness,  so  that 
both  can  play  easily  through  the  astral  and  physical  bodies,  so  that  con- 
sciousness becomes  one  in  both  worlds. 


92       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

I  have  run,  in  thus  speaking,  just  a  little  beyond  the  point  on  which  I 
want  especially  to  dwell  for  a  few  moments.  Your  physical  body,  then, 
it  is,  which  puts  you  into  contact  with  the  physical  world,  and  every  or- 
gan it  has  evolved  is  related  to  some  special  rates  of  vibration  in  the  world 
outside.  Professor  Crookes,  writing  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  in,  I 
think,  1891,  pointed  out  that  our  knowledge  of  the  outer  world  depended 
on  our  senses,  and  that  if  the  eye  were  modified,  the  whole  world  would 
change  to  us.  Now  the  ether  in  the  eye  vibrates  under  the  impact  of  the 
vibrations  we  call  light.  He  suggested  that  it  might  vibrate  instead  under 
the  impact  of  electrical  waves,  so  that  it  should  respond  to  the  vibrations 
of  electricity  instead  of  to  those  of  light.  He  then  sketched  a  description 
of  the  world  as  it  would  appear  to  a  man  who  was  seeing  by  electrical 
waves  instead  of  by  light  waves,  and  showed  how  completely  different  it 
would  be.  That  is  only  a  specimen  of  the  difference  which  might  be 
made  in  consciousness  by  a  little  change  in  our  present  sense-organs ;  and 
when  you  remember  we  are  still  evolving,  that  we  have  not  finished  our 
evolution,  you  will  readily  see  that  it  is  possible,  even  probable,  that  some 
such  changes  as  I  have  indicated  may  be  beginning  to  come;  and  as  a 
matter  of  fact  we  find  them  in  an  ever-increasing  number  of  the  educated 
and  cultured  people  of  the  great  fifth,  or  Aryan,  Root-race  to-day. 

In  all  this,  so  far  as  the  physical  body  is  concerned,  we  are  on  ordinary 
scientific  ground,  with  a  forecast  of  the  future  in  addition.  Let  us  go  a 
little  further,  and  consider  the  world  of  dream.  Here  again,  we  need 
not  at  first  leave  this  same  safe  ground,  for  science  has  investigated 
dreams  very  much  during  the  last  thirty  years.  First  it  tried  to  investi- 
gate dreams  by  finding  out  the  effect  of  suggesting  a  dream  to  a  person  by 
a  touch  on  the  body.  You  will  find  a  large  number  of  these  experiments 
in  Dn  Prel's  Philosophy  of  Mysticism,  which  well  deserves  your  attention. 
It  was  found  out  by  experiment  that  a  large  number  of  people  can  be  made 
to  dream  by  a  touch.  In  one  case  the  back  of  the  neck  was  touched.  On 
waking  up,  the  man  had  had  a  dream  in  which  he  had  committed  a  mur- 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  93 

der,  had  been  tried,  went  through  the  whole  scene  in  court,  heard  the 
charge  of  the  judge  and  the  verdict  of  the  jury,  was  sentenced,  taken  to 
the  condemned  cell,  brought  out,  bound  down  upon  the  guillotine,  and — 
"as  the  knife  fell,  I  awoke."  There  are  very  many  of  these  experiments  re- 
corded, large  numbers  of  them,  and  in  addition  to  that  some  of  us  have 
tried  similar  experiments  ourselves.  The  vividness  and  richness  of  the 
dream  depend  upon  the  richness  of  the  person's  imagination  and  thought 
power  who  is  the  dreamer.  Some  water  was  sprinkled  on  the  head  of  a 
rough  settler  in  Australia,  and  he  jumped  up  and  rushed  out  of  his  tent, 
thinking  a  terrible  thunder-storm  was  raging.  There  was  no  storm.  The 
same  thing  was  done  to  an  educated  man,  but  it  brought  a  long  panoramic 
dream  of  various  storm-effects.  The  richer  the  imagination,  the  richer 
the  dream,  even  when  thus  suggested.  In  all  these  cases  the  person  ex- 
perimented on  awoke,  and  related  his  dream,  but  it  was  a  rather  clumsy 
way  of  making  experiments;  so  next  they  tried  to  catch  the  dreamer 
while  he  was  dreaming.  That  they  managed  to  do  by  throwing  persons 
into  the  hypnotic  sleep,  in  which  you  can  get  at  the  man  while  his  dream  is 
going  on,  and  question  him  as  to  what  he  saw  and  what  he  was  doing. 
In  this  way  a  fairly  full  theory  was  made.  But  then  arose  a  curious 
question :  not  in  these  dreams  which  were  suggested  from  outside,  not  in 
the  trance  conditions  into  which  the  man  was  thrown  artificially,  but  with- 
out suggestion  and  in  normal  dreaming.  In  this  certain  other  phenomena 
showed  themselves.  Myers  has  given  cases  in  which  a  man  dreamed  of  a 
thing  that  he  wanted  to  know,  but  which  he  did  not  know  in  his  waking 
mind.  One  remarkable  case  is  that  of  a  gap  in  a  hieroglyph ;  the  student 
puzzled  over  it  in  vain,  and  one  night  an  ancient  priest  appeared  to  the 
archaeologist  and  supplied  what  was  wanted.  There  are  many  cases  in 
which  knowledge  was  not  within  the  reach  of  the  man  in  the  waking  con- 
sciousness of  the  brain-mind,  and  yet  it  came  to  the  same  man  when  he 
was  out  of  the  brain,  when  the  brain  was  in  the  condition  of  sleep. 

Observation  has  gone  still  further.     A  person  may  see  a  thing  before 


94      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

it  occurs,  and  so  be  warned  of  the  coming  of  an  event  before  it  happens. 
One  case  happened  only  the  other  day.  You  know  there  is  a  ship  that  is 
supposed  to  be  lost,  the  Waratah,  sailing  from  Australia.  In  that  ship 
there  was  one  man,  a  passenger,  whose  friend  in  England  tells  the  story. 
In  his  cabin  one  night  a  man  suddenly  appeared  holding  a  blood-stained 
rag  and  sword,  and  he  put  the  sword  between  the  rag  and  the  man :  he 
appeared  three  times.  The  dream  does  not  seem  particularly  significant, 
but  it  had  its  effect.  It  scared  the  man,  and  he  left  the  ship  at  Durban. 
Four  nights  afterwards  he  dreamt  that  he  saw  the  ship  battling  in  a 
heavy  sea;  it  rose  on  a  large  billow,  turned  over,  and  vanished.  The 
safety  of  the  ship  is  despaired  of.  The  underwriters  have  paid  the  in- 
surance; she  is  given  up.  The  interesting  point  in  that  is  the  warning 
conveyed  and  acted  upon,  and  then  the  dream  of  the  sinking  ship  after- 
wards. There  are  many  such  warnings  on  record  and  you  may  study 
them,  if  you  will.  What  do  they  indicate?  According  to  those  who  have 
developed  consciousness  so  that  it  can  work  outside  the  brain  as  well  as 
through  it,  they  indicate  the  existence  of  another  world  interpenetrating 
the  physical,  a  material  world,  but  a  world  composed  of  finer  matter  than 
that  which  we  call  physical,  and  the  fact  that  man  has  a  body  of  that  finer 
matter  interpenetrating  his  physical  body,  and  contacting  the'world  com- 
posed of  its  own  material ;  that  second  coating,  as  we  may  call  it,  of  the 
matter  of  the  second  world,  the  intermediate  or  astral  world,  is  a  body  in 
the  same  sense  as  the  physical  body  is  a  body,  i.  e.,  an  apparatus  to  put 
consciousness  in  touch  with  an  outer  world ;  the  second  body  serves  this 
purpose  to  that  second  world,  as  it  develops.  That  second  body  is  now  in 
course  of  evolution,  and  is  more  evolved  in  the  higher  races  and  the  more 
educated  people.  It  is  the  next  body  to  develop  in  evolution,  and  is  de- 
veloping now  in  the  more  advanced  nations  of  our  world,  and  this  body 
as  it  evolves,  puts  consciousness  increasingly  in  touch  with  the  other 
world  and  enables  man  to  sense  it.  The  dreams  which  give  information 
and  warning  are  merely  the  results  of  the  human  consciousness  working 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  95 

in  finer  matter,  in  a  body  not  yet  sufficiently  evolved  to  work  as  freely 
as  the  physical  body  works,  which  has  been  in  course  of  evolu- 
tion for  millions  of  years.  The  evolution  of  this  second  body  can 
be  much  quickened  by  strenuous  meditation;  as  people  meditate,  this 
body  develops  its  organs  just  as  simply,  just  as  naturally,  just  as  much 
under  the  law  as  the  physical  body  has  developed  its  organs,  one 
after  another.  There  is  nothing  that  can  be  called  supernatural  about 
this.  All  of  you  are  on  the  verge  of  it,  and  now  and  then  the  dim 
impressions  you  receive  come  from  the  fact  that  that  body  is  sufficiently 
evolved  to  respond  to  the  vibrations  of  the  finer  matter,  but  not  sufficiently 
evolved  to  be  under  complete  control,  and  to  be  working  deliberately.  In 
that  body  you  are  every  night,  when  you  go  out  of  your  physical  body 
during  sleep.  It  is  working  the  whole  time,  both  day  and  night;  in  the 
night  as  the  vehicle  of  consciousness  in  the  subtler  world;  in  the  day 
as  the  vehicle  of  desires,  stimulating  the  physical  body  into  action;  for 
this  body  of  astral  matter  is  the  body  by  which  you  feel  and  desire — hence 
called  'the  desire  body' — the  body  which  is  driven  out  when  you  use 
chloroform,  ether  and  other  anaesthetics,  and  when  it  goes,  it  leaves  the 
body  senseless,  insensitive;  for  the  real  sensation  is  not  in  the  physical 
body,  in  the  denser  body ;  that  no  longer  feels  when  these  anaesthetics  have 
driven  out  the  subtler  matter  which  normally  interpenetrates  it.  'Going 
to  sleep'  is  simply  going  out  of  your  coarse  body  into  your  finer;  just  as 
literally  as,  when  you  come  home,  you  take  off  your  overcoat,  and  remain 
in  the  coat  underneath  which  you  wear  in  the  house.  You  are  using  this 
body  now,  not  only  after  death ;  and  I  want  to  emphasise  this  fact.  You 
are  not  a  naked  'spirit'  after  death;  you  are  clad  in  a  familiar  garment. 
And  this  garment  will  become  more  and  more  familiar  to  you,  as  you  be- 
come more  and  more  conscious  during  your  sleep.  As  you  develop  this 
body  now,  not  only  after  death ;  and  I  want  to  emphasize  this  fact.  You 
conscious  as  your  waking;  in  very  truth  the  'sleep'  life,  the  life  in  the 
astral  world,  becomes  more  real  than  is  the  life  of  the  physical  world ;  as 


96       POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

the  gas  is  finer  than  the  liquid  or  the  solid,  so  is  this  astral  world  finer 
than  the  physical.  Just  as  color  shows  by  the  light-ether,  though  you  do 
not  find  it  in  the  coarser  matter  shut  out  from  light,  so  all  kinds  of  colors, 
of  delicate  hues,  appear  before  you  as  this  finer  body  becomes  organized ; 
and  you  find  yourself  in  another  world,  which  is  indeed  more  real  than 
the  physical  because  there  is  a  thinner  veil  of  matter  between  the  con- 
sciousness and  the  contacts  of  the  outer  world. 

I  pass  on  to  the  third,  the  mental,  world.  We  normally  live  in  the  three 
worlds  all  the  time  while  we  are  awake.  Whenever  you  are  thinking, 
you  are  using  a  still  subtler  kind  of  matter,  that  which  Prof.  Kingdon 
Clifford  called  'mind-stuff,'  the  stuff  that  answers  by  vibrations  to  the 
changing  moods  of  consciousness  just  as  really  as  the  vibration  in  the 
ether  gives  rise  to  the  consciousness  of  light.  In  that  also  you  are  living, 
but  the  apparatus  of  consciousness  in  this  yet  finer  matter  is  even  less  de- 
veloped in  the  majority  than  is  the  astral  body ;  but  as  evolution  goes  on, 
it  is  becoming  more  and  more  developed,  so  that  it  is  possible  to  leave 
the  astral  also  behind  and  to  be  in  full  consciousness  in  the  mental  world. 
It  is  the  world  which,  after  death,  is  called  the  heaven-world,  the  svarga 
of  the  Hindu. 

Take  it  as  a  theory,  if  you  will,  and  think  it  over:  that  you  are  living 
in  three  worlds  all  the  time — the  physical  world,  the  desire  world,  and  the 
mental  world;  that  you  use  three  bodies,  and  that  each  of  these  bodies 
is  related  to  the  world  of  the  same  matter  as  that  of  which  it  is  itself 
formed,  and  is  meant  to  be  an  apparatus  for  consciousness  working  in 
each  world.  Evolution  brings  these  bodies  to  perfection  one  after  the 
other;  as  the  perfecting  of  the  physical  body  is  going  on,  the  astral  is 
being  organized,  and  in  the  same  way  the  mental  is  also  evolving,  and 
each  comes  into  touch  with  its  own  world.  You  will  find  that  these  facts 
explain  an  enormous  number  of  the  phenomena  around  you,  especially 
those  on  which  the  new  psychology  is  founded ;  not  only  dreams,  but  also 
second-sight,  prophecy  the  visions  of  the  Seer,  the  power  of  the  Prophet 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  97 

to  foresee  and  foretell  events,  all  religious  experiences — they  all  come 
within  the  Larger  Consciousness,  and  if  a  true  phychology  must  be  founded 
on  the  testimony  of  consciousness,  then,  as  Professor  James  pointed  out, 
it  is  impossible  for  the  scientist  to  ignore  the  testimony  of  the  religious 
consciousness.  It  has  been  ignored  too  long  by  science.  If  you  ignore 
the  testimony  of  the  Mystics,  the  Prophets,  the  Saints,  witnessing  to  their 
own  experience,  and,  apart  from  these  highly  developed  people,  if  you 
ignore  the  normal,  religious  experiences  of  the  ordinary  person  in  touch 
for  the  time  being  with  the  higher  world,  whether  by  prayer  or  by  medi- 
tation, then  you  may  as  well  throw  aside  the  testimony  of  consciousness 
altogether,  for  there  is  no  rationality  in  rejecting  these  testimonies  and 
accepting  others.  But  if  you  throw  aside  the  testimony  of  consciousness 
to  its  own  experiences,  then  you  have  nothing  on  which  to  build ;  for  your 
whole  knowledge  of  matter  is  based  upon  the  experience  of  conscious- 
ness. It  is  only  an  inference  that  matter  exists ;  it  is  a  fact  to  each  of  you 
that  you  yourself  exist.  You  infer  that  other  people  exist  and  that 
matter  exists,  because  you  are  affected  by  them.  The  testimony  of  con- 
sciousness bears  testimony,  i.  e.,  that  it  has  been  affected  through  the  eyes, 
try  to  get  rid  of  all  testimony,  save  that  which  arises  from  the  eyes  of  the 
flesh,  even  then  you  have  nothing  to  rely  upon  but  that  to  which  your  con- 
sciousness bears  testimony,  i.  e.,  that  it  has  been  affected  through  the  eyes. 
How  does  this  bear  on  death,  and  on  your  attitude  toward  it?  Let 
me  now  take  the  religious  terms.  There  are  our  three  worlds ;  the  Chris- 
tian calls  them  the  earth,  the  intermediate  world,  and  heaven ;  the  Hindu 
calls  them  Bhurloka,  Bhuvarloka  and  Svarga.  Exactly  the  same  three 
worlds,  because  all  the  religions  teach  the  same  truths.  These  worlds 
are :  the  earth  we  are  in,  part  of  the  astral  world,  part  of  the  mental ;  they 
are  all  interpenetrating,  not  separate,  so  that  if  you  have  your  three  bodies 
in  working  order  all  these  three  worlds  are  visible  to  you,  and  you  are 
in  them  all  the  time,  seeing  their  inhabitants,  communicating  with  them,  as 


98      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

fully  as  in  this  world.  To  have  the  bodies  in  such  working  order  means 
long  practice  and  hard  work.  All  men  will  find  themselves  successively 
in  these  two  later  worlds  after  death,  but  they  often  mistakenly  think 
that  the  after-death  worlds  are  only  entered  at  death,  and  are  separate 
from  the  physical  during  earth-life;  modern  religions  have  made  a  great 
gulf ;  there  is  no  gulf ;  the  three  lives  and  worlds  are  intermingling  all  the 
time.  Some  of  you  think  you  have  lost  your  friends ;  you  have  not  lost 
them ;  they  are  with  you,  they  are  conscious  of  you ;  they  are  conscious  of 
you  though  you  may  not  be  of  them,  because  you  both  possess  the 
body  of  the  intermediate  world  but  they  are  conscious  in  it  and  you  are 
not.  They  have  lost  the  physical  body  by  which  they  communicated  with 
you  in  the  past,  and  hence  cannot  affect  you.  You  say  that  you  have  lost 
them,  but  they  do  not  lose  you.  They  are  conscious  in  the  desire  body 
of  another  world  in  which  you  both  are  living,  though  you  cannot  bring 
the  knowledge  of  it  into  your  physical  brain.  In  sleep  you  are  with  them, 
for  then  you  also  have  put  away  the  blinding  veil  of  flesh,  and  you  are  both 
in  the  desire  body.  During  waking  life,  you  do  not  pay  much  attention  to 
that  world,  for  your  energies  are  running  outwards,  but  still  they  are 
there  and  conscious  of  you ;  and  if  you  would  turn  away  your  conscious- 
ness from  the  outer  physical  world,  you  would  come  into  touch  with  them 
also  when  you  are  awake. 

It  is  more  difficult  to  answer  when  they  pass  on  into  the  heavenly 
world,  for  that  is  of  finer  matter,  and  its  vibrations  are  more  difficult  to 
bring  through;  but  even  there,  if  all  of  you  did  what  the  religion  of  each 
of  you  tells  you  to  do,  if  you  gave  more  time  to  meditation  and  to  prayer 
— for  both  have  the  same  result,  although  one  is  more  purely  mental  than 
the  other — that  would  bring  you  into  touch  also  with  the  heavenly  world. 
Then  would  you  indeed  find  that  death  loses  not  only  all  its  terror  but 
also  all  its  pain,  and  life  would  be  unbroken  in  the  three  worlds,  and 
death  would  no  longer  separate. 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  99 

You  are  exactly  the  same  after  death  that  you  were  before.  You  have 
the  same  thoughts,  the  same  feelings,  the  same  desires,  the  same  hopes,  the 
same  fears.  There  is  no  more  difference  between  the  man  on  this  side 
before  death,  and  the  same  man  soon  after  death,  than  there  is  between 
a  man  before  he  has  changed  his  outer  clothes  and  after.  The  'dead'  man 
has  dropped  his  outer  garment,  and  hence  cannot  now  affect  the  outer 
world.  Sometimes  he  is  so  much  the  same  man  that  he  does  not  know 
he  is  'dead.'  He  finds  it  out  only  gradually  by  noticing  that  he  cannot 
affect  physical  things  or  people  in  physical  bodies ;  when  he  speaks,  they 
do  not  answer,  when  he  touches  them,  they  do  not  feel.  He  can  see  the 
finer  matter  of  an  object,  but  the  object  does  not  move  if  he  pushes  it  as 
it  would  have  moved  before.  Over  and  over  again  we  have  come  across 
people  who  have  not  realized  that  they  are  'dead'  and  do  not  understand 
how  it  is  that  all  their  friends  are  unreachable  and  irresponsive. 

The  time  will  come,  when  all  of  you  will  drop  your  physical  bodies  and 
will  find  yourselves  in  the  next  world,  where  you  will  be  greeted  by  your 
friends  and  find  yourself  conscious.  What  will  be  your  condition  then? 
It  depends  entirely  on  how  you  are  living  now.  You  vitalize  this  inter- 
mediate body  of  feelings,  desires  and  emotions  according  to  the  life  you 
pour  into  it  by  your  regular  waking  consciousness  every  day.  If  you 
have  given  yourself  over  to  the  pleasures  of  the  senses,  it  will  be  the 
coarsest  matter  which  will  be  most  strongly  vitalized;  if  you  fill  your  life 
more  with  the  higher  emotions,  love  of  family,  affection  for  friends,  with 
cultivation  of  the  artistic  faculties,  and  with  the  interests  of  the  larger 
world,  then  the  finer  matter  which  vibrates  to  these  emotions  will  be  the 
most  vitalized  part.  So  everything  will  depend  on  the  conditions  you  are 
making  now.  If  all  your  pleasures  are  of  the  physical  body,  eating, 
drinking,  enjoyments  of  the  flesh,  then  death  is  indeed  a  very  great  shock 
and  pain.  For  the  desires  for  these  continue  on  the  other  side,  and  you 
suffer  the  ever-frustrated  cravings  for  these  pleasures  of  sense.  It  is  out 
of  this  fact  that  all  the  ideas  of  hells,  have  arisen  in  the  various  religions ; 


100      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

the  cravings  unsatisfied  make  up  the  sufferings  of  these  hells,  and  very 
real  hells  they  are.  They  are  real  tortures,  these  longings  which  cannot 
be  satisfied,  these  cravings  which  cannot  be  stilled.  Religions  are  right  in 
pointing  out  that  if  you  care  for  the  things  of  the  lower  world,  you 
will  have  a  very  miserable  time  on  the  other  side  of  death.  You  will ;  and 
there  is  no  kindness  in  ignoring  the  fact,  and  talking  sentimentally  about 
"the  mercy  of  God."  The  mercy  of  God  does  not  save  you  from  being 
burned,  if  you  thrust  your  hand  into  a  fire.  Nor  will  it  save  you  from 
suffering  after  death,  if  you  create  the  conditions  of  suffering.  God  has 
made  His  worlds  as  worlds  of  law,  and  this  is  the  truest  mercy  in  the  end. 
But  the  suffering  will  not  last  forever — that  is  the  new  horror  brought 
into  life  by  the  loss  of  the  knowledge  of  reincarnation.  The  suffering 
only  lasts  until  the  coarser  matter  drops  away,  and  this  happens  as  soon 
as  it  is  starved  out  by  lack  of  nutriment;  as  soon  as  this  is  starved  out, 
you  have  learned  your  lesson  and  are  free ;  you  have  found  by  your  own 
experience  the  truth  taught  by  the  Bhagavad-Gita,  that  the  contacts  of 
the  senses  are  awombs  of  pain."  This  great  and  salutary  lesson  is  im- 
printed on  the  Ego,  and  he  comes  back  to  earth  later  on  wiser  than  he  was 
when  he  went  out  of  it. 

Suppose,  however,  that  you  have  conquered  these  lower  sense-pleasures 
here,  suppose  that  they  have  no  longer  the  power  to  rule  and  compel  you, 
suppose  that  your  sense-pleasures  are  of  a  higher  kind,  such  as  those 
yielded  by  music  or  painting  or  sculpture  or  poetic  literature — anything 
that  appeals  to  the  higher  emotions — then  on  the  other  side  of  death  you 
will  find  that  these  are  still  yours ;  for  in  that  case  you  will  have  vitalized 
those  parts  of  this  desire  body  in  which  you  will  be  living  in  this  inter- 
mediate world  that  will  bring  you  happiness  during  your  stay  in  that 
world ;  moreover  you  may  pass  fairly  rapidly  into  the  heavenly  world.  So 
with  scientific  pursuits ;  the  man  who  vitalizes  that  part  of  the  astral  body 
which  serves  as  bridge  between  the  mental  body  and  the  physical  brain, 
who  is  fond  of  scientific  experiments  which  injure  none,  and  clings  to 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  101 

the  physical  methods  of  working — observation  and  experiment — he  will 
carry  with  him  rich  material  for  the  other  side.  Clifford  and  Huxley  and 
many  another  of  that  type  of  scientist  are  still  trying  to  help  the  men  of 
science  in  this  world,  suggesting  discoveries  and  fruitful  lines  of  experi- 
ment, and  throwing  their  mental  force  out  through  this  finer  body  into 
the  corresponding  bodies  of  the  men  still  living  here.  Especially  is  this 
the  case  when  this  is  the  world  the  man  best  loves,  and  that  is  very  often 
the  condition  when  a  man  has  not  believed  during  the  earth-life  in  the 
life  on  the  other  side.  He  remains  in  touch  with  the  physical  world,  help- 
ing others  to  do  good  work.  So  also  with  politicians — not  the  small  ones 
who  work  for  their  own  gain,  for  position  and  power,  but  the  men  who 
really  love  their  country — such  men  very  often  remain  for  a  very  con- 
siderable time  in  the  intermediate  world,  helping  those  with  whose  work 
they  sympathize.  My  late  friend,  Charles  Bradlaugh,  for  instance,  works 
much  along  this  line.  As  you  know,  he  had  no  belief  in  life  after  death, 
and  when  he  died,  he  believed  that  all  was  at  an  end  for  him,  and  only 
expressed  a  dignified  regret  that  his  work  was  over.  A  man  of  noble 
character,  of  high  ideals,  of  splendid  self-sacrifice — he  has  now  the  reward 
for  that  in  the  intermediate  world,  and  he  has  lost  none  of  the  interests 
of  the  larger  kind,  and  is  ever  trying  to  help  the  people  he  loved.  One 
constantly  finds  him  laboring  to  inspire  statesmen  and  speakers  with  high 
ideals  and  useful  lines  of  work.  Thus  he  is  still  continuing  the  labor 
from  which  he  was  too  soon  cut  off  here. 

Into  the  third,  the  thought-world,  the  heavenly,  the  man  passes  when 
he  has  worn  out  all  the  links  with  the  lines  connected  with  the  physical 
world  ways  of  working.  Such  men  as  I  have  mentioned  would  go  on  into 
the  thought-world  very  rapidly  were  it  not  for  this  clinging  to  physical 
methods.  Heaven  is  the  native  land,  the  birth-place,  the  country  of  the 
soul.  You  may  remember  that  in  an  earlier  lecture  I  said  that  we  were 
born  in  heaven  and  only  dipped  down  into  earth-life  as  a  diver-bird  into 
the  water.     It  is  indeed  true  that  our  birthplace  and  citizenship  are  in 


102      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

heaven,  the  natural  habitat  of  the  human  Ego ;  and  into  that  world  all  go 
on  out  of  the  intermediate,  in  order  to  change  into  intellectual  and  moral 
faculty  all  the  mental  and  moral  experiences  through  which  they  have 
passed.  Thus  the  joy  of  heaven  is  the  joy  of  affection,  of  the  life  of  love 
— unselfish  love  of  family,  friend  or  country,  poured  out  on  all  whom  we 
try  to  serve — the  joy  of  intellectual  achievement,  of  deep  insight,  of  high 
aesthetic  emotion;  all  these  flower  in  heaven  into  faculty,  with  which  the 
man  is  reborn  on  earth.  The  whole  life  of  heaven  is  one  of  growth,  in 
which  everything  of  which  we  here  sow  the  seed  shall  flower ;  but — as  we 
live  here  we  must  go  on  there;  we  cannot  begin  anything  there  that  we 
have  not  begun  here;  there  comes  in  the  limitation.  You  cannot  initiate 
fresh  lines  of  activity  in  heaven.  You  are  using  the  same  mental  body, 
and  you  can  only  use  the  matter  which  you  vitalized  during  your  earth- 
life.  Law  is  law.  You  may  grow  and  expand  and  increase  there,  but  you 
must  begin  here.  Just  as  a  field  which  has  no  seed  in  it  will  not  send  up  a 
harvest,  so  a  mental  body  in  which  the  seeds  of  mental  and  moral  effort 
have  not  been  sown  cannot  bring  forth  the  flower  of  joy  and  the  fruits  of 
faculty.  But  you  can  sow  for  that  harvest  now,  and  the  wise  do  this. 
For  if  you  study  now — to  take  one  example — if  you  make  it  a  habit  every 
day  to  read  something  worth  reading  and  worth  thinking  over,  not 
mere  rubbish ;  if  you  keep  in  hand  beside  you  one  book  of 
which  you  read  a  page  every  day,  which  makes  you  think 
and  adds  to  your  mental  stature,  you  are  laying  up  treasure 
in  heaven  that  you  will  find  awaiting  you,  in  that  land  into 
which  no  thief  can  break,  whereinto  moth  and  rust  do  not  enter. 
Just  as  is  your  thought-harvest,  so  is  your  love-harvest.  The  more  you 
love  here,  the  more  will  you  develop  the  love  faculty  in  heaven,  and  the 
richer  will  you  be  when  you  come  back  to  earth.  But  remember  that 
virtue  is  not  rewarded  with  riches  or  worldly  happiness.  Virtue  is 
rewarded  with  increased  virtue — a  thing  which  people  sometimes  forget. 
To  sow  love  here  means  to  reap  the  harvest  in  heaven  as  increased  faculty 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  103 

of  loving  and  then  to  have  that  power  of  love  innate  in  you  when  you 
return  to  earth.  The  late  Lord  Shaftesbury  was  ever  seeking  to  serve 
the  wretched,  was  ever  thinking  of  the  misery  of  the  poor,  and  ever  trying 
to  help  the  unfortunate.  When  he  went,  as  a  young  noble,  into  the  House 
of  Commons,  all  the  work  he  strove  to  do  was  to  relieve  the  suffering 
people — the  women  and  children  who  were  working  underground  in  the 
mines,  the  over-driven  slaves  of  machinery  who  were  protected  by  the 
factory  legislation  he  helped  to  carry.  What  was  it  that  impelled  that 
man  to  philanthropy?  Why  did  he,  highly  placed  and  wealthy,  care  for 
these  miserable  strata  of  the  population?  Why  was  it  that  throughout  a 
long  life,  it  was  always  the  most  miserable  whom  he  sought  to  help?  The 
love  he  brought  with  him  had  grown  out  of  smaller  services  in  the  past 
wrought  into  great  capacity  for  service  in  heaven.  Just  as  an  architect 
draws  a  plan,  so  does  the  Ego  plan  out  his  future  work  in  heaven.  This 
world  is  the  place  for  building — it  is  the  world  of  action;  heaven  is  the 
place  for  drawing  the  plan — it  is  the  world  of  thinking;  and  the  materials 
that  you  take  with  you  from  the  past  life,  these  are  with  you  there,  and 
you  return  on  earth  to  complete  that  which  you  planned  in  heaven. 

And  so  you  are  always  living  in  three  worlds;  and  those  you  will  be 
conscious  in  after  death  are  worlds  you  are  now  in  unconsciously,  but 
which  you  may  be  conscious  in,  if  you  will.  I  do  not  pretend  that  it  is 
easy  to  unfold  that  consciousness.  I  should  be  misleading  you,  if  I  said 
that  you  could  gain  it  without  working  for  it,  without  strenuous,  per- 
sistent endeavor.  But  that  is  true  of  every  science.  If  you  ask  me 
whether  you  can  become  a  great  mathematician,  I  should  answer  that, 
first  you  must  have  some  innate  mathematical  faculty,  then  you  must 
study  strenuously,  and  then  in  time  you  can  become  a  first-rate  mathe- 
matician. For  great  success  in  this  life  you  must  bring  an  inborn  faculty 
with  you.  Then  the  time — you  must  be  able  to  give  time  to  its  cultivation, 
for  faculty  does  take  a  considerable  time  day  by  day  to  cultivate.  Then 
you  must  have  the  will  that  never  swerves,  a  great  perseverance.     So  in 


104      POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 

this  case.  If  you  have  some  faculty,  and  give  time  and  perseverance, 
then  you  can  do  as  others  have  done,  and  can  live  consciously  in  the  three 
worlds  in  which  you  are.  Think  what  this  means.  It  means  that  death 
has  no  longer  any  power  to  separate  heart  from  heart,  life  from  life;  it 
means  no  separation,  but  continual  communion  with  those  whom  you  love. 
And  it  means  that  this  earth  cannot  really  make  you  anxious  or  miserable, 
for  you  are  living  in  three  worlds  and  the  earth  is  only  one  of  them.  You 
have  your  work  in  other  worlds  if  this  earth  fails  you,  and  none  can  shut 
you  out  of  those,  whatever  they  may  be  able  to  do  to  you  here.  It  means 
that  life  is  rich  and  full ;  it  gives  you  three  worlds  as  your  kingdom  instead 
of  one.  And  it  is  true  for  each  of  us  as  the  Christ  said  of  the  children 
when  He  was  last  on  earth,  that  "in  heaven  their  angels  ever  behold  the 
face  of  the  Father."  For  what  is  the  angel  of  the  child  or  of  the  man? 
It  is  the  Higher  Self,  the  spiritual  consciousness,  and  that  spiritual  con- 
sciousness is  ever  living  in  the  heavenly  places,  although  the  music  of  his 
voice  is  so  often  drowned  in  the  harsh  clatter  of  the  world.  You  cannot 
hear  the  sweet  strains  of  the  vina  in  the  clatter  of  a  bazaar;  you  cannot 
catch  the  softest  breathings  of  the  violin  in  the  clamor  of  the  bullock-carts 
and  the  rough  clangor  of  the  tram-cars ;  and  so  is  it  with  the  delicate  voice 
of  that  inner  consciousness,  that  exquisite  music  of  the  Spirit,  which  is 
symbolized  for  the  Hindu  in  the  flute  of  Shri  Krishna,  the  music  that 
attracted  all  that  heard.  He  played  it  in  the  fields  by  the  running  waters, 
on  the  mountain  and  in  the  forest  glades,  where  fawns  were  playing  and 
cows  were  grazing ;  for  it  is  not  in  the  crowd  that  man  can  hear  the  voice 
of  the  inner  Self ;  he  must  seek  it  first  in  the  silence,  where  the  music  is 
not  drowned  in  the  coarse  sounds  of  earth.  But  this  is  also  true:  that 
when  once  you  have  learned  to  hear  it,  then  your  ears  need  never  be  closed 
to  it  again,  and  it  will  steal  to  you  even  through  the  noises  of  worldly  life. 
Effort  is  wanted  to  open  the  inner  hearing  and  the  inner  eye-sight;  but 
once  opened,  they  are  yours  for  all  time  to  come. 


MAN'S  LIFE  IN  THE  THREE  WORLDS.  105 

And  so  we  finish  our  talks  with  this  great  lesson :  that  this  life  of  ours 
is  full  of  splendid  possibilities ;  that  we  are  all  unfolding  Spirits  living  in 
evolving  bodies ;  that  as  the  Spirit  unfolds  his  powers  he  shapes  the  bodies ; 
that  thought,  the  creative  force,  is  the  tool  with  which  that  sculptor  carves 
his  image,  that  Spirit  shapes  his  bodies.  Oh!  if  you  could  see  with  the 
inner  eye,  and  not  only  with  the  outer;  if  you  could  realize  in  the  spiritual 
life  what  the  great  artist,  the  artist  of  genius,  realizes  in  the  artistic  life 
when  the  great  creative  impulse  comes  down  from  the  heavenly  spheres 
into  his  brain.  Ask  the  musician.  He  will  tell  you  that  he  has  heard  his 
noblest  melodies  in  another  world  than  this,  and  is  only  singing  here  in 
poor  successive  notes  the  music  which  there  he  heard  in  one  splendid 
multi-chord,  and  not  in  slow  succession,  as  Mozart  declared,  when  he  tried 
to  tell  his  marvelous  experiences.  Ask  the  sculptor  what  he  is  doing  when 
he  faces  the  block  of  unhewn  marble  with  the  creative  impulse  strong  upon 
him.  He  will  tell  you  that  he  sees  within  the  marble  the  statue  that  shall 
be,  and  that  it  is  his  work  only  to  hew  away  the  superincumbent  marble 
which  hides  the  Beautiful  within  it  from  the  eyes  of  men.  O  friends! 
such  is  also  the  work  of  the  God  within  you,  of  the  Immortal  Artist  who  is 
Beauty,  who  dwells  within  the  form  of  the  body  unseen  by  the  eyes  of 
men  less  keen-sighted  than  the  Seer.  The  Spirit  within  you — he  is  the 
sculptor,  the  sculptor  who  hews  away  the  rough  marble  from  the  polished 
statue  which  is  himself,  the  Inner  God ;  he  is  the  musician  who  hears  the 
heavenly  music,  and  must  sing  it  out  that  all  may  hear  its  harmony.  All 
you  have  to  do  is  to  take  the  marble  of  the  lower  self,  and  with  the  chisel 
of  will  and  the  hammer  of  thought  to  cut  away  the  matter  that  prevents 
the  Beautiful  within  you  from  being  seen ;  to  let  the  God  within  you  shine 
out  in  glory  and  lighten  the  world  in  which  you  live.  You  are  children  of 
heaven  living  upon  earth ;  you  are  Gods  in  the  making,  and  you  too  often 
live  like  brutes.  You  are  divine,  not  only  human.  Will  you  not  rise  to  the 
height  of  your  splendid  possibilities?    You  are  of  royal  birth,  sons  of  a 


106 


POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  THEOSOPHY. 


King;  will  you  not  realize  your  nature  and  claim  your  birth-right?  Sons 
of  the  immortal  King,  you  are  too  many  of  you  living  like  the  scavengers 
of  earth,  raking  over  its  rubbish-heaps.  Your  crown  is  shining  above  you ; 
will  you  not  wear  it  ?  Your  throne  is  vacant ;  will  you  not  ascend  it,  and 
rule  the  kingdom  which  belongs  to  you?  Will  you  not  take  your  birth- 
right as  the  Sons  of  God,  and,  lifting  up  your  eyes,  claim  the  heritage 
which  is  yours  ? 


Date  Due 

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